Le Enfant Terribles
by Sansophia
Summary: After the mutiny of the Medical Staff, the overseer of Springvale Complex exiles the St. Vincent twins and his niece with one directive: Find Dr. James St. Vincent or else. But is the green, verdant hell above better than the jackboot on their throats below? So they set out to prove that their games made them ready: Vaultdwellers are OP
1. Notes

Opening Notes

I understand your time is precious. This is a novelization attempt of Fallout 3, but frankly, I hated the game and I wanted to see if I could make something I liked about of it. As such it does not even attempt to stick to canon, and uses several mods, oh life and sanity saving mods, which makes my game enjoyable. These include:

1\. Brisa Companion mod

2\. Vurt's Flora Overhaul (Forested)

3\. Amy Wong Companion mod

4\. BA Wasteland Restoration

5\. Rustic Grass

6\. Just another Vision Mod

7\. Fallout Classic weapons

8\. Several parts of Tale of Two Wastelands, especially NVUE weapons

I will take requests for other story/quest mods.

This tale also assumes working vehicles, no Social Preservation Experiment, although each Vault was designed as a pre-war hot lab testing things that could very well have gone wrong, and above all, a far more consistent application of pre-war technology and manufacturing. The 50s plus robots it wasn't.

I'm not saying don't like it, don't read, I am saying that the lore often doesn't make sense and it's my purpose to iron the kinks out. Fair warning applies as this is fanfiction. I did my best.


	2. Gonna Kill the Lawman

Gonna Kill the Lawman!

One day, late in the evening, so as not to hurt their eyes, three young adults walked out of Vault 101 and into the blackening eastern sky. The oldest was 21, the other two 20, and in that time they had lived their entire lives within the DC Outerbelt, and never seen any of it but the rock and the steel that encased their little city. It had been a hundred years since the sealing of Vault 101, a hundred years of splendid solitude. That is except for the scouting, the monitoring of radio channels and taking in the occasional refugee too useful to be left in the cave that connected the service entrance to the outside world. Still, it was as isolated as a hermit kingdom could realistically be.

Brisa: "My God...it's so beautiful...and it's still a shithole." She took off her helmet so to see the outside world with her own eyes, unobstructed by the heads up displays that obscured her view from inside the helmet's faceplate. And it was beautiful. The cave led out to a narrow outcropping on a hill that faced east with the Washington Monument almost straight ahead of them in the distance. The Monument, at least from this distance, looked undamaged, but the city itself was another matter. Some districts had what looked like spotlights beaming into the sky, perhaps, Brisa reasoned, as a way to direct people towards them. There were lights going on all over the city, even in a few buildings that had gaping holes in their tops and sides. Many of the damaged buildings looked fuzzy, which was probably due to vegetation growing on their sides and in open crevices. Some sections looked too damaged to be inhabited. Despite the sky being alight with the oranges and pinks and purples of sunset, Brisa was wary of what she saw.

Brian: "And yet you came out here with us." Brisa looked at the twins behind her, slightly closer to the cave and further from the outcrop she stood a foot from. The brother, Brian St. Vincent, and his sister, April, had kept their helmets on, though Brisa could see their faces through their transparent faceplates. They looked very different with the helmets on, more professional, less individual. April, being April, wore her lab coat over her armor. Brisa thought it looked silly. Brian approached, and wrapped his thickly gloved hand around Brisa's, feeling the 'leather' as though he had touched it with his own hand. "Thank you." As it happened, a plane flying low and fast, clipped just over the trees from the north, heading in the direction of what had been Reagan International. "Well that's a good sign."

Brisa: "Yeah, civilization."

April: [playful and smug] "Come'on you guys, there's no time for romance." Brisa turned around, more than a little annoyed and April's flippancy.

Brisa: "April, you know it's not romance. For God's sake, this is special moment! We're all going into exile together. We could all die out here!"

April: "Unlikely. We're highly trained Vault Dwellers. Two doctors in residency and a robotics specialist. We will find patrons quickly. Don't get too mushy just cause the hundred year old sign says 'scenic view'." She pointed to a dented sign sticking out of the ground, blue with white trim and lettering. "We're here to clear Dad's name..."

Brian, "He's not going to come back, April. And without him, we don't get to go back either."

April: "Uh, no Brian. We don't technically _need_ him to go back. We just need to prove that the bump that let the radroaches in wasn't caused by him hacking open the service door. We all know that story's bullshit. Fucking things came in through the reactor level. That blast was a shockwave on the outside. We just need some proof. And some testimony. Easy peezy."

Brain: "And our lack of firepower?"

April: "What of it? We know how to make stimpacks, we've got top of the line light armor and..." she tugged on her lab coat, which was over her suit and chest plating. "We have walking advertisement that we're professionals with in-demand skills. And the fact is well-maintained Colts and a bunch of hollowpoint 10 millimeter bullets will put any logical foe we should encounter in the gloom. Wha? You believe in mutants?" Brian failed to look directly at her, "You really believe that bullshit?" She held her arms out to the full, as in taking in the whole scene.

April: "Brian look around us. Radiation doesn't work that way. You don't get special powers from heavy radiation. You get sick and you die. This place is Chernobyl: look at it! It's probably the biggest nature preserve east of the Mississippi! We're gonna see deer, and we're gonna see rabbits and well fed bears...and OCCASSIONALLY we'll see the remnants of the 'Scorpion Sun' campaign. But that's only Chi-com bioweapons. Most of them are probably extinct."

Brian: "That's not what dad said. Remember the Deathclaws? The Mole Rats? Three Dog on the radio talking about 'Supermutants?'"

April went over to her brother and put her arm over his shoulder and nudged her head close to his, and even with their all covering helmets, it showed real affection.

April: "Just remember the square cube law. We see any other engineered insects, remember, they, by the laws of physics, have to be so light that the concussion of a good kick will shatter their organs. The Chinese made them too big. They just look scary, if you know what you're doing. And we have enough VR time under our belts that we do. There is no problem here," Brisa picked both of them apart after a moment and faced April, though she was in between them both.

Brisa: "Um, I don't mean to rain on your parade, but remember it was radroaches that got us into this mess in the first place?"

Brain: "Oh I haven't forgotten Brisa. But I think my sis is trying to say we won't see anything out of a monster movie. Too maladaptive to survive more than a few generations. Still hasn't answered my questions."

April: "And of course, there's a big difference between crushing an ant the size of a Chihuahua and fighting an ant big enough to ride to work. I mean, yes, bioengineering is fuc...messed up, sorry...but anything grown or significantly altered in a lab fails to be as sturdy as the lab work promises. Nature's pretty damn robust."

There was silence for more than a minute. One wasn't sure what to say. They were huddled around each other and not sure where to go. To the east was a semi-ruined Washington DC, to the south, the even more wrecked skyscrapers of the Arlington Metro Area, and then the road below them which theoretically lead them somewhere.

Brisa: "Well, we need to decide what we're going to do..."

April: "I think we should wait until it's completely dark and then make our way to this 'Megaton' place."

Brian : "APRIL! You haven't answered my question. Dad talked about a lot of very dangerous creatures. And if there's no mutants, then what the hell are the Supermutants the Brotherhood is supposed to be fighting in DC? Look at DC, that's a warzone. Damage like that doesn't stick around for 100 years unless someone can't rebuild."

Brisa and April looked at each other. Brisa shrugged her shoulders and April looked at them both. She didn't know what to say, then stammered out:

April: "Look...well, they apparently call some creatures mutants, but they can't actually be mutants because being called a mutant doesn't mean they are mutants. Biological warfare experiments, genetically engineered creatures, maybe, but oversized and aggressive creatures are not the result of random, radiation induced mutations."

Brisa: "Yeah, but is there a difference? A mutant is a mutant regardless of origin. Who cares if it's not radiation that did it? Bioengineering, chemical warfare, specifically mutagenic toxins, is there a difference? A difference that matters in terms of not being eaten alive?"

April: "Yeah, but...look, that's why we're going to be traveling at night. We have false color nightvision and VATS and local radar HUDs. Besides, [mostly to herself] there can't be a lot of these creatures because their food requirements would be enormous."

Brian: [ignoring April] "Are we sure about this? It's called Megaton. It has an atomic bomb in its center. They aren't sure it isn't still live!"

Brisa: "Well, I'm open to ideas. Megaton is the closest settlement we know of, the one the last expeditions made contact with." After a good second, "Good. As leader, I'm taking us to Megaton! Now remember, this isn't VR, and April, this sure as hell isn't Wasteland Warrior. If you act like a murderous psychopath I will put you down myself."

April: [offended]: "Hey! I don't go on murderfests! I only kill bad guys. I don't even kill annoying NPCs."

Brisa: "You're a fucking gamer and gamers do all kinds of horrendous shit because it's 'no consequence environment'. If you want to know why Humans are terrible, give a gamer a game and watch the atrocities pile up. And I'm not having any of that shit in real life."

April: "Bitter much? Again, I don't kill anyone but bad guys."

Brisa: "Then don't assume anyone is a 'bad guy.'"

"HOLY SHIT! SOMEONE HELP ME PLEASE!" This cry, from a female, came from down the road, to the south.

April: "I'm being a hero right now, don't try to stop me." And she took off as fast and fleet as her large, cumbersome backpack would allow. She was however, clearly in good shape as she went down the hill and onto the broken road.

Brian: [lurching after her from a dead stop] "Ah fuck!"

Brisa unholstered her other gun, not the Colt, but the Compliance Regulator, a stun gun. Do No Harm was something she meant when she took the oath. And she began to jog along too although her body was already making her regret it. She wailed to no one "Why me?!"

What was worse were the voices coming behind the female voice:

[deep male] "Stop Making us Work for it!"

[crazy sounding]"Gonna kill the Lawman, Gonna kill the Lawman!"

[Singsong, female] "Gonna kill the Lawman, Gonna kill the Lawman!"

At this point, things were dimming to where the trios nightvision stages were starting to kick in. Biofeedback from the eyes were being fed into their visors and as their pupils started to dilate ever so slightly, the visors were compensating, meeting their vision requirements halfway.

They were quickly starting to sweat. It was much, much hotter on the outside than in the Complex, but the newness, and even freshness of the air had been so pleasant to their monkey brains they had virtually ignored it. Now, they smelled the grass through their mouths, the air tasted moist and hot, if such a thing were possible. When they hit the tree line, which when right to the road, though not yet on the road, things got cooler.

Around the bend came their would-be damsel. She wore a long brown coat; open in towards them, with a blue shirt and dark pants. And she was wearing a cowboy hat, a beige Stenson looking thing with upturned brim. The brown coat seemed to be weighted because it didn't flow behind her as she jogged. She was getting tired by her falling pace. She pointed an AK at her followers, and told them to stay back but they only used her backpedaling to catch up.

April, in a way, had been preparing for this her whole life. Between her parent's stories, and the VR games, April was ready for the post-apocalypse she actually lived in, but had never directly experienced. She stopped, threw off her backpack, tried to steady her heaving breath, and took out her Colt. She breathed in a deep ragged breath as she got down on her knee and bellowed out the first thing she could think of: "Everyone fucking freeze, or I will shoot! Do [huff] do it! Do it now!"

She heard a male voice call out: "What the fuck is this shit? COME'ON BOYS, it's killing time!" April would have popped the jerk halfway through the word killing if she hadn't forgotten to loose the safety on her gun. Yes, it was a rookie mistake and it filled April's mind with real pain from the humiliation. She was so desperate to flip the safety off; she fumbled while trying to remember where it was in that moment of panic when three bolts from Compliance Regulators hit three of these raiders square in the chest.

Brisa: "Oh my God!" Brisa nearly dropped her pistol in shock, as April looked behind her to see who had fired.

Brian: "I'll say! Two shots dead on! Brisa, that's incredible!"

The unknown woman quickly got to her feet and knocked the guns away from the raiders, one by one, then starting from the back, picked them up one by one, although April couldn't see what they were. April came up to Brisa and said, "I owe you my thanks, Miss, and probably my life."

Brisa held up her stun gun and said "Thank you Miss, but who are these people, and who are you?"

The woman: [chuckling] "Didn't you hear? I'm the lawman. My name is Amy Wong, I'm a Capital Regulator. You know, we are justice, we are the law, that sort of thing?"

Brisa: "We listen to Galaxy News and we've never heard of any Regulators."

The Regulator Amy Wong: [cocking an eyebrow] "That's because Three Dog is a Brotherhood tool. I'm a Regulator, my name is Amy Wong, and these assholes were contacts I was making inside the Raiders….It went badly. Now hold on a second, I don't want to alarm you…." She took out an AK-112, Soviet make, not Chinese, one could tell from the dark wood. She grasped it by the hold, flipped the safety on and began to work the ejector until a bullet casing fell out, "AKs never jam, my ass." She replaced the gun on the inside of her jacket. "So, whom do I have the honor of meeting this evening?"

Brisa reluctantly put her gun away, taking her hand off a Regulator and into a Regulator. "My name is Dr. Brisa Almodovar. We're an expedition from Springvale Complex."

Amy Wong: [somewhat stunned but shaking her hand limply] "Vault 101? You're from Vault 101 right?" At this point April had gotten her safety off, then back on and was back on her feet beside April.

Brisa: "That's the code of the Complex, yes, I guess."

April: "It's also on the back of all our Vaultsuits. I think they're designed to track all the people who die horribly in the Wasteland. But I don't know." Brisa let go of Wong's hand

Brisa: "April, I've got this….now, yes we're from Springvale Complex and any directions you can give us to the nearest settlement, _civilized_ settlement, would be much appreciated."

The Regulator Amy Wong: "Yeah, I'm headed back to the Traveler's Rest; it's a way stop a bit up the road. My squad is waiting for me. I'd be happy to take you if you'd help me escort these three…." She looked back and they were gone. This was not good. "You didn't have much juice in that stunner, did you?"

Brian: "I did, I set it at full power."

Wong [trying not to look alarmed]: "Well, it's the Exclusion Zone. And well, we got their arms, a .32 pistol, a baseball bat, a club and a switchblade….hmmm….tell you what, you come with me and I'm introduce you to the King." She put these things in an inside coat pocket which could hold a basketball, if required.

Brisa: "The King?"

Wong [smiling]: "My boss, his last name is King. So how about it? If you're out here you're looking for something, we might be able to help you find it."

Brisa: "Agreed. We'll come with you and not to the city built around a live nuclear warhead."

Wong: "It's not so bad. That bomb's never hurt anyone."

April: "Ms. Wong? Before we go, can you tell me why for the love of God they would not only build a city around a bomb, but keep it there?"

Wong: "Vaultdweller question. Easy enough, it's how you out crazy the crazies. Not even raiders want to risk setting off a nuke in the middle of a firefight. Plus there's a crazy church that worships the bomb so it's become a tourist attraction."

Brisa: "So there are other Vault Dwellers? Here on the surface?"

Wong: "let's get moving, shall we?" They began to walk. The answer is yeah, but let's keep it quiet until we get to the Rest." April, properly chastised, decided the lab coat was not appropriate for traveling, and put her heavy backpack long enough to stuff her labcoat in one of the pouches. She put it back on, waited for the mechanics in her pantlegs to readjust so she didn't risk throwing out her back, and quickly caught up with the others.


	3. Traveler's Rest

Traveler's Rest

It was a good 40 minutes of walking back to the Traveler's Rest, but about ten minutes in there was no doubt that the "Regulator" was telling the truth. Through the overgrowth a bright spotlight shown into the sky as the suns last rays turned the sky dark purple. The light was brightened by the fact the spotlight didn't point straight up but as nearly as straight as it could to bounce light back from the clouds, creating artificial moonlight and brightening the surroundings that much more. April remembered this from her histories of World War II, Battle of the Bulge, but like so many things downloaded into the mind, she was kind of surprised she knew them at all. It was as if a long forgotten fact was segwayed into by a different conversation, the way in romance novels how the scent of a perfume can conjure the image of a lover the protagonist was eager to forget.

Nothing was said on this walk of course, because while most raiders would have shown up on the trio's scanners, probability is not certainty. Being ten minutes out of the Vault and nearly being shot at by bandits has instilled in them caution. The Regulator Amy Wong, having no tech but long experience, was glad fresh meat had good sense and April could see this plainly from furtive and somewhat approving backwards glances. The face will tell you everything if you can read it. They had walked along the left side of the road, where a nearly filled in drainage ditch combined with the tilt of the road gave them half cover, something to dive into in case a sharpshooter decided their armors were worth the inconvenience of scooping death poo out of their headless drawers. There were no disturbances.

The Regulator Amy Wong climbed up to the road and the trio followed suit "Now, a couple of rules in a neutral location…"

Brisa: "Um, how do we know what a neutral location is?"

April: "And what exactly IS a neutral location?"

The Regulator Amy Wong looked back, said this one sentence, with no irritation and then looked ahead with eyes towards the ground: "I'll explain, so keep walking with me."

She continued, "See, in a few moments we're going to see an American flag. That's neutral ground, no fighting, no stealing; an unholstered gun is a death warrant. Generally, no drinking either, but Traveler's Rest is an exception. Now I'm not sure what you've been told in that Vault, but given we haven't seen a 101 in 20 years, I'll give you the rundown: FUSA's on its last legs, that's the last of government, the Brotherhood of Steel has split in two, one still lead by Lyons, the good guys in grey, then there's the Outcasts, in red, they're assholes but not the kind you need to shoot at. Lyons kicked FUSA out of the Pentagon, Free State Units from Baltimore aren't seen on this side of the Anacostia, Supermutants have overrun almost all of Blight, Arlington and DC both, the Mall is under siege and the only safe corridor to Rivet City, Port Reagan and Alexandria is on the west bank of the Potomac with ferries to Rivet City. Raiders are being pushed back by the supermutants in all directions, which means no road is truly safe for 40 miles in any direction, and you're smack in the middle of the quarantine zone those worthless shits from Baltimore call 'The Capital Exclusion Zone.' Also known as The Capital Wasteland. Any questions y'all?"

Brisa: "[Huff] That was way too much information. Actually we have a lot of questions…" She was stopped in her tracks as she saw a very menacing turret looking at her with red LED eyes and tracking her with its gun. "Uh, is that turret on auto-kill? I mean, does it need a human to open fire…on us? Cause….well…."

Amy: "Stun only. It hurts TERRIFICALLY, so I wouldn't advise getting close and making it feel threatened."

This turret was at the corner of a chain linked fence, and though the overgrowth was cleared around the encampment, it wasn't until now that April noticed the overwatch on the water tower; men in black armor looking down on them without visible eyes or faces. April wasn't sure of the make of their weapons until the passive VATS scan, aided by the focus of her eyes told her they were fielding a Ma Deuce with a large, dangerous looking scope. 50 cal and probably set for single shot sniping. Her gaming experience in VR games told her they were packing demolition rounds, ones that exploded on contact. Even with a miss, the concussion alone could kill or incapacitate.

That is, if they were smart. Then again, she thought, if they really knew what they were doing, they should have cleared the growth, trees and brush, out to half a mile. In her defense, she was a gamer and most games, even in from the late 21st century, were based around fighting and killing. Easy, sloppy, idealess game mechanics meant little risk and they were in all honesty less sadistic than simulations where one could starve one's settlers to death or burn them alive with an oven accident.

April shook her head clear and saw they were already inside the compound. She remembered looking up, scanning, and a couple of minutes went by without her notice. Maybe she would make a poor sentry, but what worried her is that getting lost in the mind like that could prove fatal. Not every raider killed with a charge and a yell. That scared her. She'd never been scared of combat in a sim, even when the pain thresholds were on maximum. Dying in VR was never fun, but it was also never permanent. Fortunately for her, it was only the foreboding of foreignness she registered here.

The Traveler's Rest felt safe. It was, like the Vault, well lit and people were everywhere. Unlike the Vault, most of them looked dirty, wearing brown overjackets with lots of pockets on the vest and sides, many seemingly full of things. Helmets, old battered motorcycle helmets mostly, were not uncommon, though a lot of people were sitting in lawn chairs with the helmets at their feet and a beer in the hand. But the guys they were headed towards looked to be in the same uniform as Amy Wong: blue collared shirts, long pants, brown combat boots and green overcoats with…..cowboy hats. They looked like pre-war post-apocalypse costumers. April shuddered at the thought these were not real cops, but wannabe cops, Vigilantes with pretentions of glory and a law they didn't really understand. Still….

They walked between brick buildings that looked like they had been New Suburban small town storefronts and a wide, roughly filled-in parking lot full of trucks, but mostly four-wheelers and motorcycles and what looked like hardly, high wheeled autorickshaws. A note to the modern reader: an autorickshaw is a three wheeled small vehicle used mostly as public transportation or small cargo transports in the developing world in the early mid 20th to 21st century. The style April was seeing at this moment were the ones made famous in the years before 2077, when most of the world was destroyed, and the 2050s, when the Arab world was nuked to within an inch of their lives by Israel. The Israelis did not take an explosion of a 35 kiloton nuclear bomb in a Tel Aviv parking garage with any degree of humor; nor should any nation that loses 5% of its population and sees a quarter thoroughly irradiated in the course of morning rush hour. In the wake of the 'Sampson Option,' hardy, all-terrain versions of the autorikshaw, with large cleated wheels and high ground clearance were all the rage in the still inhabited Arab cities; the minor cities mostly being abandoned in favor of provincial and National Capitals where aid and rebuilding resources were centralized and distributed as efficiently as Arab kleptocracy would allow.

This localized case study was extensively studied by all Vault Dwellers of the post-apocalypse and all planners and survivalists of the pre-apocalypse.

The Regulators took no notice of the 101 trio at first. Though to close inspection their body armor was fresh, and well maintained, their blue jumpsuits were well padded and resembled the hardy blue pants of the people around them. Light body armor and riot helmets weren't uncommon either. But somewhere between the deep, unmarred blue of their jumpsuits and most probably their thick black gloves going back to almost the entire forearm, the Regulators seemed to perk up at seeing them.

"We-hell shit," one of them said, a male, obvious in tone a shitkicker, "I wish I could find Vault Dwellers on my smoke brakes."

Wong: "That's why you call me the Sly One youngster, Hey Randal!" she tossed a medium sized piece of equipment to a fatter man appearing in his fifties though his face was covered by the shadow of his hat "That's what I was getting. These three are a bonus." She took a polite bow.

The Regulator called Randal stepped forward, pocketing the device in large pockets on his pants. He was a large man for his size, though he wasn't any taller than 5'10 and probably came only to 5'8. But he was built something like a bulldozer and if he had ever been a football player, he would have been a natural on offensive line, what with his short legs and low center of gravity. "Good job…Sly One. Now take a walk and get a real cigarette." As the Regulator Amy Wong walked beyond and took a cigarette from his hand he came up to the three of them. "How's the evening treating you all?" He smiled with genuine completely good natured delight.

Brisa took his hand warmly "Hi. I'm Brisa, Dr. Brisa Almodovar, I'm the leader of this expedition. It's a pleasure to meet…."

April: "Sir, are you a real cop?"

The man called Randal: "Excuse me miss?" Brisa and Brian tried to shush her but April was having none of it.

April: "It's a fair question. Are you guys real cops? Or is this Regulator thing a self-proclaimed 'I am the law because I say so' but you don't actually answer to a government…." At his stunned silence, she continued, "Look, I read post-apocalyptic fiction, I grew up in a brutal dictatorship led by a total legalistic asshole, a thorough holier than thou bully who just exiled me and my brother after breaking my colleague's face over something my Dad didbutt no one but him knew about. Then he forces my mom to stay so we'd have to come back with my Dad, who has disappeared to God knows where. So I'm pretty particular at this point about 'duly constituted authority' and what constitutes police brutality. If you're going to hit me for talking back, then hit me hard and let me be on my way." All of this calm and even, with only the slightest twinge of the outrage April felt, indeed had felt her whole life in the Vault. After a moment, Randal answered back to her:

Randal: "Miss, that's a lot to lay down on a man at one go…" then he held up his hand in acceptance and bidding them to keep quiet, "…But that's OK, a lot of people in the Capital Region have questions like that. It's normal. My name is Randal King, I'm a Capital Regulator. That's a sheriff's office encompassing all of the Capital Exclusion Zone. Our chief is officially Sheriff of Fairfax County, and we do our best to keep basic Commonwealth of Virginia Law, even in Maryland, although functionally there is no state government. We don't shoot innocent people, or we try not to. We tend to be soldiers out in the countryside but operate more as police inside settlements. We do try to take prisoners, and there are elections every two years, although the city councils do the elections. We help people traveling through the Capital Exclusion Zone; we locate and eliminate raiders; we track Supermutants, we collect evidence when we find crime scenes and add them to our database, countryside or not."

He stuck out his hand, "And it's a pleasure to meet you…miss…"

April: "Doctor…."

Randal: "Doctor?"

April: "Yeah. Two doctors and a service tech…my brother Brian. Although, Brain is very skilled in repairing just about anything AND…" she went on as Randal clearly wanted to change the subject "he's crossed trained as an engineer…."

Randal [extending his hand a little further, making April's eyes widen as she realized she hadn't taken it]: "And you are? Doctor?"

April grabbed his hand with a little too much enthusiasm: "Dr. April St. Vincent" And she shook his hand with way too much enthusiasm "At your service. MD, autodoc certified, Surgeon qualified, in VR at least, and I dabble a bit in bio-tech and veterinarian duty as the need arises."

Randal let go and shook his hand as though April had shook something numb, and said "I'm happy to make your acquaintance Dr. St. Vincent." He looked at Brian and offered his hand, which was taken, "And you're Brian St. Vincent? Are you a doctor? Doctorate?" Brian looked crestfallen but didn't say anything. "Not much of a talker are you?"

His comrades were puzzled at this, until Brisa said "Brian, are you shy?"

Brian: "Uh….maybe. I guess so. I've, I've never met anyone new before. Who knew? Ha ha…uh….Mr. Regulator, to answer your question, there's no doctorate program in the Vault…"

Randall: "Wanna be a doctor of Repairing and Engineering? Round it out and you can all be doctors?"

Brian: [face brightening with incredulous smile] "Is…is that allowed?"

Randal laughed: Kid! This is the Capital Wasteland; you're practically a sage if you can read!

Brian thought out this for a long time, say two seconds: "I could teach it, yeah, so I guess it's close enough." He said this, as confidence and an almost smugness came into his voice with every word

Randal: "Well, then, Doctor," he nodded at Brisa, "Doctor," he nodded at April, "This is Dr. St. Vincent; I believe you three know each other already?"

They all had a laugh, a good mirthful laugh at this. It was like some tension was broken, not simply the anxiety of being in a lawless hellhole, but the exile from home, however oppressive. The trio's body language clearly showed this release of tension. Yes they were eating out of the Regulator's hand, but they were glad to do it. They needed to believe him. They even detached their large bulky backpacks, the ones that made movement so awkward but carried all they had left in the world.

Randal: "So, now that we're done with introductions, what can the Capital Regulators do for you?"

Brisa was all business again: "We need food, shelter, a place to stay, and we're looking for their father. His name is James St. Vincent. We're not supposed to come back until we find him. Ever."

April: "Yeah, the Overseer was real insistent on that point."

Randal: "Okay, what did he do?"

Brisa: "He opened the door"

Randal: "Wha? Door?"

Brisa: "Oh yes, the main/service door to the Complex. It used to the service entrance before the war but the parking lot entrance was sealed when the nukes went flying. Our Overseer believes that because Doc St. Vincent hacked the door terminal, the aftereffects included a cascade failure in the Vault's operation system, which caused a minor shockwave that cracked open part of Engineering, letting in a slew of rats and radroaches from the old drill tunnels from when the Vault was being built. They got into the ventilation shaft and caused a huge panic"

Randal [shaking his head]: "I'm not following how one follows from another."

Brisa: "That's the thing, no one does."

April: "Stop giving him the benefit of the doubt Brisa! He's an ASSHOLE. His support comes from the dimmest bulbs in the Complex: the garbage burners and the janitorial wetware. Simple Minds gah!….He needed someone to blame for something that was a long time coming so the simple minds would continue to follow his orders without question. That's what he does, nothing can ever be his fault, not because it's his fuckstick ego because and I quote 'It would be bad for morale.'"

Brisa looked at Brian: "You believe that?" Brian nodded. She looked at Randal "That's the most likely story." She nodded her head as she said this, coming to the conclusion it was safe to be this candid.

Randal: "So, you want me to find a man whose only crime was wanting to leave this Vault, and lead him back so some autocratic demagogue can put his head on a stick? So are we talking literally or figuratively? I've seen both in my time."

Brisa stiffened her posture with pride, "No sir!" This surprised Randal who backed his face away from instinct. "We need to find him because he's from the outside and he's got to know this place better than us…..Don't get us wrong Mr. Regulator, sir, but we need to figure out why he left, and given that he's always been a good guy, he could probably use out help on a good idea….He was our boss until this weekend. Head of the Medical department. Well, not Brian's boss, but me, and April, April and myself, excuse me, and Jonas. Jonas had his face bashed in for not helping the Overseer, and he had to say because he's the last fully qualified doctor in the Vault. And, as April already mentioned, he's holding the twin's mother as collateral so we wouldn't just walk away."

April: "But we're walking away anyway. Unless we can find proof that our dad didn't cause that breach, as in someone or something blew it open from the outside, it would be suicide to bring him back."

Brian finally spoke up after tapping his sister's shoulder to let her know he wanted to speak: "The fucker doesn't want us back anyway. If he did he would have let us talk to mom! Then we might know where he went! He just wants to punish dad, so he broke up his family, sequestered his wife and strung his children out to die in the wastes. That's the kind of authority we'd be facing if we came back. I'm a terrible person for saying this but even mom isn't worth that. Fuck the Overseer! Fuck him with a depleted core! The Complex is actually a nice place to live if you can ignore the prick, but he's in charge and we can't kill him. So until he dies, we'll take our chances here….apologies for the swearing."

And the Regulator stood, listening to all of this, shuffling his feet as they were starting to hurt. "Why don't we sit down a spell? You've got a lot on your minds. " He had his deputies draw up chairs for them by the side of the truck where they too were lounging. They were tense though, April could see that. It was the way they sipped their drinks. That wasn't a hard days drink, it was getting ready for a difficult all nighter. But April and her comrades tried to relax as they nestled into the lawn chair, dirty old things rebound with what looked like old curtains or tablecloth. Well, expect Brian's where a few of the green nylon pieces were still intact here and there. April took the lead as soon as they were seated.

April: You see, Officer King….Regulator King….?

Randal: "Officer Randal. It avoids the repeating R. Most people find it offputting."

April: "Thank you, Officer. You see, my brother and I were born in Springvale Complex, 101 is the code number, but my father and mother are from the outside. I know my father was born and trained in Baltimore, my mother is from somewhere off the Maryland coast, an Island settlement called Carnate. It sounds terrifying; the settlement is built around a 20th century maximum security prison and an even older insane asylum. But, apparently, good schools attract good people. They pray, a lot. God she creeps me the fuck out when she talks about it.

Anyway, they were both scientists, my mom had some prenatal cardiac problems so they decided to try and get entrance to the Complex, and we were born in the decontamination levels. Again, good schools. They didn't talk much about what they did, but they did live in the Washington Naval Yard. We're thinking my dad is trying to revive some old contacts, although whether he's in Baltimore or Rivet City or anywhere else, your guess is as good as mine. Probably better. Can you do an APB? He is a scientist, and that could be valuable right?"

King was listening, but got a bottle of cola out of an old cooler (understand that there were here and there new looking things, clean things, shiny thing, but they were an exception), popping the top off and began drinking it affably. That is to say with less intensity and vigor than his deputies.

Randal: "Would you like something, any of you?"

Brisa: "Does is cost anything?"

Randal: "Good. You're not witless. And the answer is no, as long as it's beer."

Brian: "What about Nuka-Cola?"

Randal: "First lesson of economics out here. Beer is cheap, sells for two bucks, Nuka-Cola is fifteen."

Brain: [shocked] "How does beer cost seven times less than Nuka-Cola?"

Randal: "You ain't tasted it yet. Here, have a swig." He handed a beer to all of them, all took it. "Come'on now, it's safe."

Brian lifted his faceplate and took a gulp because he had been asked. He nearly gaged. After getting his breath, he said "I'm a bad person to ask, I hate the taste of alcohol. But this shit…."

Randal: "Lotsa reasons as you can taste. Beer can be made with shit water. DC's a swamp so all the water's bad without treatment."

April: Irradiated you mean?

Randal laughed: "Every time I talk to someone from a Vault, they're always concerned about the radiation. The whole water table's irradiated, but that's actually a good thing. No kid, pathogens. In three days or less, your head is gonna swell like bullfrog's throat and seal up like a Bullfrog's ass. No amount of that fancy medicine is gonna save you from getting sicker than a dog. City folks always come here and three days later they half wish they were dead. But getting back to cheap beer, it's because you can make it with shit water, the radiation helps cleanse it, the alcohol mostly sterilizes it, and it doesn't taste good because moonshiners tend to cut it with Rad-Away to even out the doses."

Brisa: "Officer," she stood to be polite "That makes no sense whatsoever." At his request she continued: "Pathogens can be sterilized alone by boiling the water, long term radiation would only produce radiation resistant pathogen strains, and what in God's name requires you to cut Rad-Away in beer? It's been a hundred years since the bombs fell, and it's obvious that the DC area was hit with neutron bombs because the cityscape is almost completely intact. Radiation is a short term threat."

Randal: "Yes Ma'am, however, are you familiar with what happens when a fission reactor melts down? Well, let me tell you, because you've got that Vault education and I'm just a country bumpkin who has to prove I…." Brisa tried to speak, even raising up one black-clad finger to say that's not what she meant but Randal wasn't having it "Oh, not country bumpkin, wasteland yokel because people on the outside obviously can't have the time while dodging ten foot tall insects and cannibal raiders to know the difference noun, a verb and an adverb. You Vault Dwellers tend to be all right once you get your heads out of your asses but you all come out making a LOT of assumptions about what a 'post-apocalypse' should look like. But as to my part, I know damn well apocalypses are overrated, and I deal with real problems, not the primordial fears and fantasies by people who are stuck in the visions of a future past. And you can sit down Dr. Almodo….var? Yeah, Almodovar."

Brisa sat down, looking somewhat ashamed but mostly flabbergasted. The twins looked at her then took off their helmets, a sign they were going to listen close and completely to the kind officer of the peace. They put their helmets in their laps (and Brian's beer was handed to the asphalt)

Randal: "May I continue?"

Brisa: "Yes, Yes of course; we have a lot to learn about the realities of the post-apocalypse in the greater DC metro area."

Randal: "Well that's good, because we get all kinds of travelers through the Capital Region and there's a lot to know for all of them. Refugees, travelers, settlers, traders, we try and tell them all. It's the neighborly thing to do. At least that's what the Virginians do; the Marylanders tend not to give a hanking crap."

Brisa: [clasping hands] "And we're from Springvale Complex, which makes us a settlement in Virginia too, and that makes us all neighborly, right?"

April: "It depends."

Brisa: "April!"

April: "Brisa, I don't have to play nice with would be mutant Confederates singing songs about how the South Will Rise Again."

Randal: "Oh I like you miss, Miss Doctor St. Vincent. You will be happy to know that even topside, Virginia only made that mistake once. Never again."

April: "But Virginia isn't actually the South anymore is it? Cause before the war there were a lot of cultural fluctuations…."

Randal: "Virginia is as southern as it's people desire."

April: [crestfallen] "Damnit, I live in the South."

Brian [looking annoyed at her]: That's what' you're concerned out? Now? We're meeting new friends," he looked at Randal "I hope anyway" then faced back to April "And now you want to start bitching about the Civil War?"

April, without any shame or flustering: "Yes, because the things I don't like about the Old South are things I don't like about the post-apocalypse." She held out her finger and began counting on them "Number one: slavery is never cool. Ever. Number Two: Extreme poverty is never cool, especially when rich people live it up while poor people starve and live in tin shacks. Number Three: Racism, towards mutants or other people. And don't give me any crap about the Plebiscite, we won and we absorbed the Hispanics. And fourth: me hating on the Confederacy is equal opportunity. I mean that for any group that wants to build new kingdoms on American soil. I'm a Yankee Fucking Doodle on this one. The Overseer says America lives in us, but he doesn't want to do a damn thing about making sure America lives on the topside."

Randal [looking intrigued]: Do you want to become a Regulator? We could use a doctor, and we fight for America, we fight for America on the all-important lower levels. Fight raiders and bandits all over this territory…." He held this out in his words

April: "I dunno; can we subcontract? See if you're what we want to go with?"

Brisa and Brian: "We?!"

April: "Yeah, we! WE need a place to stay. WE need protection from those coked up Raiders that tried to beat Ms. Wong to death. They charged at her when she was pointing an AK-Series Assault rifle at them at point blank range. Doesn't matter if it jammed, that's a hell of a risk. For Christ's sake, they didn't even have armor! They had stinking, tattered clothes and a baseball bat and a switchblade. Against a trained lawman. That's psychotic. And then we stunned then, Ms. Wong got her gun unjammed and they were gone! Each one of those stun blasts should have put them down for half an hour or more! So yes, maybe WE can subcontract and get to know what exactly we've gotten ourselves into. I personally like info-dumps in real life, they happen BEORE I get myself into trouble, but I get the impression we're going to need a whole frickin field guide to survive out here. Something we can learn, ahem, on the job."

Randal blinked, then blinked again. This was happening fast, it was clearly going in his favor, and he very much gave the impression to April as though he had hit a jackpot and was trying to hide it. April could tell though. She was always good at reading people, telling them what they wanted to hear.

Randal finally shook his head and said: "Are you well rested?"

Brisa: "Why?"

Randal: "We're about to go on a mission and we could use doctors. We don't trust stun blasts, what we do trust is the power of loud shiny guns to get the enemy to surrender. But usually there's a firefight and we need to patch up their people and ours as quickly as possible.

Brian: "We're rested. We'd planned to head to the settlement called Megaton in the darkness, but we found Ms. Wong being chased down the street almost as soon as we got outside. But is there anything I can do?"

Randal's eyes nearly gleamed, giving them a menacing look, not from malevolence, but sheer intensity, "My boy, can you repair Robots? Not the mechanical stuff, I'm talking about the software end?"

Brian: "I can try. I might or might not, software malfunctions can have both physical and…"

Randal: "Come with me!" and he nearly swept the young man off of his feet and off his chair, nearly knocking his helmet off his lap (Brian caught it) and definitely knocking the beer off its center, causing its contents to flow out and slowly make their way to a small storm drain in the parking lot. "Never mind that. Not good beer anyway."


	4. The First Patrol

The First Patrol

Les Enfant Terribles

David Kwan was enjoying himself some fine scotch. It was 10 pm and looked to him like a quiet night full of soft drinking, soft music, and soft women if he could help it. Platonically, as he was married, but she was in Fairfax and he was pulling dispatch duty here so it was three hots and a cot and more than a little paperwork. In came Russell King, almost marching in his stride over to the Kwan. Kawn hadn't even looked up.

Kwan [into his drink]:"Hey Rus, you seem awful excited. You got news for me?"

Russell [taken aback]: "How'd you know it was me?"

Kwan: "You come in trampling round like FUSA cadet, hard floor picks it up everywhere. Determination like that means someone's got good news or trying not to lose their nerve as they come in to shoot someone. " He flicked a mean looking dagger out of his right wrist. "Don't worry kiddo, I was ready."

Russell [with cocked eyebrow]: "I'm not a spring chicken. I'm what? Four years younger than you? You're damn morose and paranoid."

Kwan: [slowly, in a draw]: Exuberance and optimism are for the young and soon to be killed. How you survived so long and can still be excited is beyond me….come to think of it, it's rare to see you this all strung up and giddy. No stupid smile, but your body is all excited. What's the good news?"

Russell sat on a stool next to Kwan and almost whispered, "We got a wiz kid out of the 101. We got three of them. Two doctors and a repairman."

Kwan: "Vault Dwellers don't save the world. They die just as easily in our line of work as anyone else. Just get them an escort to Megaton. They can probably help in the Naval Yard. Rivet City will treat them nice and prosperous."

Russell: "Hypocrite."

Kwan: "Regulator King," he began officiously "I'm well aware of the troubles FUSA is in, but there are no miracles in this world. You'd be wise to remember that."

Russell: "Then come and see."

Kwan got up with a 'scratch' as the stool and the floor mutually protested the movement of chair legs. He put on his cowboy hat and said "Shoulda said that at the get-go. I had to wait for ya." And then made Russell wait as he had his glass topped off and had a pretty green paper umbrella put in it.

Outside, between the glare of the lights and the now pitch darkness of the sky around them around them, Kwan had to squint uncomfortably to see three dark blue Vaultsuits somewhere in the vicinity. He couldn't see them yet, and was as always scanning around everywhere because his life might depend on it. They came around the corner of the saloon to the parking lot, where he saw two traders, some Regulators and two Mr. Handy types. One was a Mr. Handy and the other was a military unit. Kwan said nothing as he heard:

RL-3: "I would remind you again, maggot, that Gutsy Class Army Robots are not vulnerable to hacking attempts. By the love of God if I had my attack…. "

Brian: "Unit Command 6-4-1-2 Stand By. Stand Down" and the bot gently hovered its center of gravity to the ground and curled up its arms around its spherical main housing. It was like a squid going to sleep.

Trader: "Well, you can shut them down all right; you can get them up again but…."

Brian: "I could wipe its memory and do a manual imprint, but if you say this thing has combat experience then almost all of it will be lost with the personality. I need to convince it to come to me willingly."

Trader: "And that's why it can be yours for the low, low price of 1,000 caps!"

Brian: "You topsiders really, really take caps in lieu of real money?"

Trader: "Oh for the last time Mister, yes. We take real money too, but good luck finding usable singles."

Brian put his head on two of his extended fingers, disbelieving what he had heard, again. It made it no less painful: "It's pitifully easy to fabricate bottle caps; Dollars have holograms, special printing dyes…."

Other trader: "That's why they need the Rivet City script stamp."

Brain: "But you take caps without it! You didn't even look at the Regulator's caps when he paid you…." Then it hit him "Will they stamp these caps on demand?"

Other trader: "Ha ha, kid no."

Brain cocked an eyebrow "Will someone else stamp them on demand?"

Other trader [damn near winking]: "Oh, whoever do you mean? This is confusing my simple brain; I think we should stop this conversation right now and focus on making a sale. _Right now._ " He was looking at the Regulators who clearly were neither impressed nor annoyed.

Brian finally got it "Ah ha, Of course, how silly of me. And Tinker Joe," he looked at the first trader, "I'll TAKE the bot off your hands because you can't sell the thing and it's useless to try and even arm it. It might very well start shooting at your customers."

Tinker Joe: "Fine, 500 caps, IF you can get RL-3 to come with you voluntarily; only if you can do it. I want to see you try. And I mean that, you've got real talent."

Brain looked over the robot again and looked at the panel of the bot, opened it and began to scan it. "Watch me, old man." After a minute he banged the bot and without even closing the panel He said "All right you son of a bitch! Activate 6-4-1-2."

Rl-3: "…You deactivated me?!"

Brain: "And I let you remember too."

RL-3: "Mister, though the Geneva Conventions do not necessarily apply to simulated personalities, I would remind you that torture of non-combatants is unbecoming of officers and gentlemen in any field."

Brian: "No Sargent, this is a trust building exercise. You can't ignore me, I could wipe your memory; I could make you sound like a five year old princess wannbe instead of that gruff Drill Sergeant Rollins voice you seem to like."

RL-3 sensors were on mechanical stalks evenly spread round his head, and as was custom with these bots, RL-3 faced those he spoke with, in this case Brain St. Vincent, with two of those sensors arrayed like widely set eyes. Indeed, they looked like round headlights like those in sporty cars; just human enough for some empathy. And all of these lights shuddered at the though, as did Kwan. It wasn't exactly torture but it would be very cruel.

RL-3: "Please don't take away my voice."

Brain [stoking one of the sensors with his gloved hand]: "Don't worry buddy, I won't. I want to talk, and I want you to listen."

RL-3: "Please don't make my voice electronic either. I want my voice to the world to be full of gusto! I want my enemies to tremble at my baritone!"

Brian smiled: "You got it. I won't take your voice away from you. But I want YOU. Not your abilities, YOU. I want to hear your stories, benefit from your experience. I need someone to watch over me and my sister and Brisa. It's dangerous out here; we need a bodyguard, a sentry, a watchmen. My name is Brian St. Vincent, and I repair things. I'm not good at shooting them."

RL-3: "Ahem, Mr. St. Vincent, a Gutsy Class automaton is built for the Army Life! While I'm not deaf to your needs, my duty is to Uncle Sam…"

Kwan didn't hear the next line as he stuck out his arm to make sure Russell didn't run in to help the kid. He now understood the good vibe Russell had and he wanted to see what the kid could do. He took a cool drink from his glass.

Brian: "And see that's why I need you. The Army is disbanded, for the time being. What we have here is the Federal Unified Security Administration, the FUSA"

Other trader: "Yeah, good ole Former USA." Brian looked at the trader, and then back at RL-3.

Brian: "That's what we need to change. Raiders are out here terrorizing people, stealing from hard working American citizens. We need to help these people."

RL-3: "You have my attention…."

Brian: "You're my ticket into FUSA, and together, we'll be in the most important line of work: Field Requisitions."

RL-3: "So you need me so you and your security buddies can deprive the enemy of the material they need to prosecute their attacks on civilians?"

Brian: "That's the idea."

RL-3 [sensors blinking and moving as though in thought]: "I'm not sure Mr. St. Vincent, you sound awful goody good to me. In China we saw lots of civilians and many of them attacked us. In force…[with utter disgust] and out of uniform."

April [from behind the people gathered around]: "Under the Geneva Conventions, non-uniformed combatants are bandits and may be shot on sight. I personally plan to do just that."

RL-3: "Step forward and identify yourself woman!"

April nudged her way forward and exposed herself. Same body armor, but with a shitkicking grin and a crisp salute "Sir, April Natalie St. Vincent, MD, at your service! Sir!"

RL-3: "Sir? SIR?! Madam, you have me confused for someone else, I work for a living…." And seeing she didn't get it, "A Sergeant is an NCO, madam. We are not country squires. Nonetheless you have the right attitude about how we deal with maggots who do not respect the laws and customs of war."

Kwan turned to Russell and whispered, "Oh great, a killjockey."

To which Russell said "She seems to be a fighter. And a doctor."

Kwan: "Doctors are not supposed to be fighters."

Russell: "Says you. The other one is all business, nice and professional. You'll like her."

Kwan: "Where is she?"

Russell: "Heck if I know, somewhere around here."

Brisa came out of the darkness, waving her hands, "No no no no!" She pushed herself into April's face, "Under no circumstance are you dragging me into Wasteland Warrior, not 1, not 6. We are out here to find your father, to HELP your father, to clear all of our names so we at least have the OPTION of going home. I am leader of this expedition, I'm older than you and yes, I am pulling rank."

Brian: "Brisa, shut up! We're going to be freelancing! We need to find dad, they can help us. But it's quid pro quo, dig? And we need an escort, RL-3 could be our key, and I'm in the middle of _delicate_ negotiations." He looked back at RL-3: "That's our expedition leader Brisa. We're going to be doing field requisitions but our main objective is to find a very important scientist."

April: "Yeah, think Operation Paperclip."

RL-3: "My databanks have no record of that operation."

April: "Well….think of it like this: our dad is very important to our Vault. He's a scientist. We need to get him back. And judging from what this place sounds like, we'll need to fight our way to wherever he is. So, can't you help us, Sargent RL-3? Help an American settlement recover one of its most important members?"

RL-3: "Dual objectives, fractious team, seemingly little combat experience; I'm liking this less and less. I think I'll stay with Tinker Joe. He may look like a washed up Chicom, but by God he's a capable businessman."

April thought quickly and said: "Dad abandoned his post as chief medical officer, and we need to bring him back for court martial." RL-3's head turned towards April, then back to Brian.

RL-3: "Is this true, Mr. St. Vincent?"

Brian: "Yes, yes it is, RL-3. We need to find him and escort him safely back home so we can launch a proper investigation. But we need him to come with us unharmed. And," he remembered his new title, "It's Dr. St. Vincent. We're all Doctors of some kind."

RL-3: "Hmmm….so you're willing to track down your own father, and return him against his will for a fair trial for deserting his post?" Brian nodded, "Well, I'm sorry your father is such a pitiful louse, but I respect your dedication to your duty. If you can keep me in good repair and if you remain dedicated to finding your spaz father, and if you pay Tinker Joe the full amount, I will, against my better judgment, come with you and make sure you get him home safely."

Tinker Joe: "Ha! I'll take 500 caps! I never thought I'd get old RL-3 to ever go with anyone! 500 caps, or dollars, and he's yours! Oh this is a happy day!"

Brian: "Do you have 500 caps? Brisa?" She said no, "Do you have 500 dollars?" She said yes, and then added it was in the Vault's banking servers. "Ok, then do you have 500 dollars worth of trade?" She said not that could be afforded in loss, "Well, then that's why we need to work with the Regulators. So now where's Russell?"

Russell; "I'm here." He stepped forward, "This is the dispatch officer Kwan the Paranoid"

Kwan the Paranoid: "Howdy folks."

Russell [looking at Kwan]: "I'm requesting 500 dollars for the Mr. Gutsy bot and 150 for the Mr. Handy model, and would like to emphasize we got both nearly for free, from the kid from the 101. What do you think Kwan?"

Kwan [never looking up from his drink]: "Your expenses are approved. Now leave off, get your men ready, I need to talk with these three in private."

A few minutes later, the trio were sitting across a study looking wood and metal desk from Kwan, who hadn't spoken anything but pleasantries on the way to his office, which was located above the Saloon, and was bare save a desk, two filing cabinets and a naval cot fastened to the wall, which was put up at the moment. He scooted his desk computer effortlessly from the center of his desk to the wall side, as it was much lighter than it appeared, and saw these young people clearly. They were fresh meat if he'd never seen a stripped ant carcass. He put his drink down, more than half empty.

"I'm Regulator David Kwan, I run patrol dispatch here. Now, I take it from the numbers on your backs that you're from the 101," they nodded, "that you're on a mission and can't come back until you accomplish it," they nodded, "and there's a fourth person from the 101 on the loose and he's related to at least two of you….now, which one of you is in charge of the expedition?" Brisa raised her hand, "You then, you tell me who you are, why you're here and how we can help you."

Brisa gulped in her chair, as if to collect her thoughts "I'm Dr. Brisa Almodovar," Kwan scowled, "this is my colleague Dr. April St. Vincent and her brother Bria…" Brian looked at her with a glower, "Dr. Brian St. Vincent, a Doctorate of Engineering."

Kwan was not impressed, "Made up titles?"

Brisa was not fazed: "VaulTec VR certified. We've all gone as far as our training will allow in generalized practice. The only things we lack out here are medical supplies and Doctor Orderly field surgery units. Brian here, well, you saw him."

Kwan: "Go on."

Brisa: "We just left the Complex a few hours ago. We were hoping to make it to Megaton under the cover of darkness. We're looking for Dr. James St. Vincent, our chief medical officer who came out of the Vault this weekend. He's not like the rest of us: he and his wife emigrated into the Vault just before the birth of these two. He didn't say what he did before, only there was some kind of project, and it wasn't going anywhere. He went up and left, leaving both the kids and wife behind and then there was an explosion in engineering and a slew of radroaches came out of the walls and got into the vent system. The Overseer blames James, Dr. St. Vincent, and so we were sent out to find him. We also want to clear his name before we get him back: we all know the Doctor, he'd never put the Vault residents in jeopardy, not for anything. Besides, the connection in hacking the main door and the explosion in engineering doesn't make any sense."

Kwan: "OK then. It sounds like you've got a lot on your shoulders. What happens if you can't find the good Doctor?"

Brisa: [hanging head] "We don't get back in."

April: "Other than Mom, good riddance!"

Kwan: "Hmm, I take it Little Alphonse is still in charge of the Complex?"

The trio looked stunned, and Brisa asked, "You know about our Overseer?"

Kwan: "What? You little pups think no one ever leaves the 101? Scratch that, that's just the kind of thing Alphonse would tell the kids." He held up his left arm, which had a PipBoy attached to it. "Bet the Complex is a tad underpopulated at the moment. Did he tell you it was natural population decline? "

Brisa: "We never discussed it. The old people said there used to be so many more youngsters, but….they never said why."

Kwan: "It's not important right now. What is important is that a lot of us did leave, for a lot of different reasons. Now, I personally have been trying to get back in to see family for nearly 15 years. I can tell my transmissions are getting in but the shithead never responds."

April: "That sounds like our beloved Overseer…."

All Three: [singsong] "He who shelters us from the harshness of the atomic wasteland, and to whom we owe everything we have, including our lives…"

April: "Did the Overseer start doing that or has that always been part of the GOAT?"

Kwan: "It's always been part of the GOAT. In every Vault I've heard about. You can guess why so many people were eager to leave. Now," he got up in his chair, "I just happen to know where your father went."

All three: "You do?!"

Kwan brought his PipBoy to near his mouth and said, "Playback Today's Special, the most recent one."

From his PipBoy came a familiar voice: " _People of the Capital Wasteland! It is I, Three Dog, your ruler! Hear me, and, obey! Oh, sorry, that's that, OTHER, radio station…_ "

Brian: "Hey it's Three Dog!"

Kwan's PipBoy: "…. _For those of you not in the know, to the northwest of Megaton there's this vault. Vault 101. And every few years or so, someone comes scrabblin' out. Well wouldn't you know it, someone's come out of it again! And, I kid you not, he came to visit yours truly right here in the studio! Now, this cat, James is his name, had been in a hole for years! He needed to know what was what out here in the beautiful Capital Wasteland! So I, the great and powerful Three Dog, set my brother straight. I told him what was what. Who are the winners, the losers, the movers and shakers. So if you see James out there, you say hello. Be kind to our new brother, and show him that here on the outside, we always fight the good fight. Hey, and in case a light bulb just started glowin' over your head, you can flick the switch and forget about it. You're not getting into that vault. Whoever lives in there sure as Hell doesn't want what you're selling, and no, you can't knock down the door. It weighs like 13 tons._ " Then the PipBoy's recorder clicked off audibly.

Three mouths agape sat in total stupefaction. They looked at Kwan, they looked at each other, they looked back at Kwan.

Brisa: "Well, that was surprisingly easy."

Brian: "One time I didn't listen to GNR…"

Kwan cocked his eyebrow: "You can get GNR in a Vault?"

Brian looked at him earnestly: "Easily. We're not supposed to, but it's been real easy to hack the radio dampeners. In Service tech, we basically do this for anyone who is willing to buy us a good lunch. All we have to do is implement the PipBoy's built in signal boost, and we can get stations as far south as Charlottesville North Carolina. Most of them clear as a bell."

Kwan: "There's a Charlotteville in North Carolina?"

Brain: "Not all post-war settlements are going to call themselves Megaton, Rustbucket, Scrapheap or Nuketopia." April stuck her tongue out at him "Anyway, they play some good bluegrass on Sunday evenings. I know it's terrible right outside the Complex, but it's not so bad elsewhere."

Kwan: "I don't want any of you anywhere near DC. That place is a warzone, and Three Dog isn't kidding about the Supermutants ripping you in half and eating your remains. So tell me this: what did your Dad do?"

Brisa: "He's not my dad, he's theirs, but he was our chief doctor…."

April: "I hacked his files. He was working on enhanced water purification. That's probably what he was doing before he and mom came to the Vault."

Kwan: "Your dad's an immigrant TO the 101?" He leaned forward, "What does your mom do?"

April: "She's a botantist. Specifically she helps engineer micro plants that clean water and dissolve buildup in the Complex's pipe system."

Kwan: "So you're saying, the Overseer, who won't let anyone back in took in two highly trained scientists from, 20 years ago or so? They were most likely part of Project Purity."

Brisa: "What is that? And where?"

Kwan: "About 20 or 23 years ago, the Brotherhood helped a bunch of do-gooder scientists from Baltimore establish a mass purification center in the Jefferson Memorial. Don't ask me why there, I don't know. What I can tell you we already have two leads, no three leads on where your father might be. Three Dog is a Brotherhood tool, and only mentions Regulators or the FUSA when it makes us look bad. I don't want to talk to him, and I don't want you to get yourselves killed trying to talk to him."

Brian: "Can't we just call him on a phone? A radio phone or something? Going in person seems to me to be a waste of time when even a ham radio would do."

Kwan: "Smart kid. Or we could try and go in guns blazing into the Jefferson Memorial. That will take time to organize, and I couldn't justify it right now….And don't you go saying he can save the wasteland or other such crap. The fact that he bolted on you means nothing to me and nothing to anyone in FUSA. I'll tell you what. I'll try to contact Madison Li, she's the head scientist at Rivet City and she used to be a part of Project Purity. If nothing else we can get other names down and interview them systematically."

April: "Why are you helping us?"

Brian: "Yeah, if you don't think our dad had a breakthrough, and can't help save the DC area's water table, then why help us?"

Kwan, took a drink from his glass, polished it off and sat down again. "Because King is right. We could use your services. Helping out even part time specialists could prove invaluable. And Vault Dwellers in general are invaluable. Good health, usually some kind of skill. Even Garbage Burners are highly skilled, and well paid. Why do you think I left?"

Brisa: "A Garbage Burner? I….I don't mean any disrespect…."

Kwan: "You don't see how? Cause the Vault is fucking with your brain. Garbage Burners are highly skilled incinerator specialists, Fry cooks are skilled in home repairs and the basics of explosives. Manicurists are familiar with the basics of energy weapons and systems, Councilors are great at brokering trades and finding business opportunities. That's not counting any VR training and self-education. Every Vault Dweller is cross and overly trained and can be found a use for. So unless he's going to Baltimore, and he might get shot for breaking quarantine, we have another specialist that brings needed skills here. "

Kwan: "Now, in the next 24 hours the chances are very good that you all are going to get very, very sick. Probably malaria and if it's not that then something that will make you shit yourselves several times over. But since you've had your shots I assume, it won't kill you. So….as much as I'd like to keep you in safety, I think there's a trade we can make. You go with Regulator King into Springvale tonight and deal with the aftermath, we'll make sure you get beds, medical attention, and I'll start an investigation into where your dad has gone to and once you're not sick anymore, we'll revisit the issue. "

Brisa: "We're not suited to combat…."

April: "Brisa! We've got combat armor, we have HUDs with several vision types, and yes, I have combat expertise, in VR. And if VR is good enough for emergency surgery, it's good enough to shoot at bad guys. Come'on Brian?!"

Kwan: "Calm down, all of you, well not you," he pointed briefly at Brian "You're pretty calm all ready. No, you are the last people I want in combat. I want you two lady doctors to patch people up as directed after the fire stops and I want you young fellow, to take that Mr. Handy and make sure it notes valuable salvage and loot. You're just going to be taking inventories, but frankly, we need anything that can be salvaged and the building the raiders are holed up in is probably going to be demolished as soon as FUSA can requisition a demo team and the explosives to bring it down. We don't want to leave anything for them. So no combat."

April: "Give me a plasma rifle and I'll outfight any raider. I've got experience."

Kwan: "What kind?" he was bored by her enthusiasm

April: "A Winchester P-94a. It's like the caster version but lighter and is fired like rifle instead of a mini-mortar."

Kwan: "What kind of experience killjockey?!"

April: "I have the highest score in the Vault at finding cover. Finding appropriate cover at all times is the chief means of surviving a firefight….That and not firing at cover on accident; you get splinters in your face with a gun and the backblast might fry your face off. "

Kwan: "Good, then, you know something. But you aren't getting a gun from me," her face fell, she showed signs of outrage "Just patch people up, we need your medical skills more than we need your….your….warrior ethos, let's call it. Good doctors are hard to come by."


	5. The Sewer

The Sewer

Le Enfant Terribles

For April St. Vincent, this was shaping up to be Wasteland Warrior, more 3 than say 6. The military style truck under her rumbled and shook violently under the cracked and ruined road. She was in the pickup bed, which was covered with tarp and laid with fixed benches and hand holds. There were six Regulators in the group along with the trio: Russell King was in front cabin with Gussman, the radio operation whom they had not seen, and with April, Brian and Brisa there was Howard, the shitkcker with the southern accent, (April wasn't sure it was first name or last name or only name ) Amy Wong, the Asian female they'd saved, Madoff a guy who looked like he was skinny dangerous And Devon, a burly black female who looked like a mammy stereotype except for the clothes and lack of accent. Looked like she could knock the sense into any one she chose, and angry enough to do it. All of them cradled their weapons in their hands, mostly AKs except for Devon who was packing a China Lake Grenade launcher for squad support. There was also RL-3 following behind, hovering behind the truck keeping a pace at maybe 10 miles an hour.

Brisa was clearly nervous, "So, where are we headed?"

Devon, who sounded much sweeter than she appeared, said: "Springvale kiddo."

Brisa: "Yeah, but where in Springvale? Are we talking about Springvale the suburb Springvale Complex is in or Springvale township? Are we expecting a street battle or in a building?"

Howard: "It don't matter much," he spit disdainfully down the exposed part of the tarp and onto the side of the truck outside, "We're gonna be killing something tonight."

Amy Wong: "Howard, don't do that."

Howard: [laid back] "Be bad luck otherwise. If you don't spit in Death's eyes he can see y'all plain and clear."

Wong: [looking at Brisa] "Thing is, we don't know. We're going to patrol out to the far side to the river bank and kill anything that shoots back at us. That's a patrol."

April: "Search and destroy mission? No recon?"

Wong: "Maybe, we just don't know. We don't expect too much resistance. Raiders tried to loot some of the fields within sniping distance of Megaton. Old Stockholm taught them a very painful lesson. They're not very smart and probably not very numerous"

April: "Well I'm ready."

Wong: "Good. Good girl. Just remember the safety this time." The rest of the Regulators were confused, "She tried to drop the riff-raff that was chasing me earlier this evening and forgot to switch the safety off." Over some guffaws, "Yeah, it was these other two who saved my bacon." She looked at April "Don't worry, I've had worse. I had an AK jam on me once. That's why friends are so important."

April sighed, more annoyed at herself more than anything. She brought out the gun from her holster on the left side and practiced repeatedly switching the safety on and off in smooth motions. This went on for some time, before Brian nudged her and said, "You can use the Compliance Regulator you know?"

April: [annoyed] "Stuns don't kill, Brian."

Brian [nearly hissing but quiet]: "That's the whole _idea_ April. Don't be a psycho."

Brisa: [leaning over towards them] "In April's defense, those stun blasts really didn't work as strongly as we supposed."

Brian: [getting louder] "What is this? We can't shoot our way out of all our problems!"

April [smiling]: "Of course not, that's what speech checks are for! I'm kidding, I'm kidding."

Brisa put her hand on Brian's shoulders, and said "For the record, I'm not having any fun either. Seriously, Brian, it's OK. We've got real cops watching our backs, and we have that Mr. Gutsy so we should be fine."

Brian: "I'd be regretting leaving the complex if I had had a choice….but I didn't."

Brisa: "I'll watch out for you. Both of you. It'll be OK."

The truck came to a stop, brakes squealing and groaning with complaint.

Brian: "That doesn't sound healthy for this low a speed. Air mufflers aren't being maintained."

The engine rumbled on for another few minutes when Russell came to the back and said, "Move out, Regulators!" The four Regulators moved out of their spots and off the truck and Brisa gave a shrug of questioning as to whether it meant the 101 trio, and with a rolling of his hand, they came out as he instructed, though not nearly as smoothly as the Regulators before them.

Though their faceplates, they could see that they were at a three way stop, with a burned out gas station on one side with a bus stop and what appeared to be a row of burnt out houses and rubble piles that used to be houses on the left. Except for a few framing timbers it would be hard to guess there was ever a settlement here, between the trees and grasses. It was really the HUD's scanning for debris piles that really let them see what had been there. The smell of the night air was impossible for any of them to describe against the cold filtered air of their childhoods and the Complex's ventilation system. The sounds though, were not new from many VR sims: the sounds of crickets chirping and then briefly, a dog's baking and two cracks of gunshot. There was no sound of the dog in pain, so they either weren't related or the dog was part of a hunting trip. But as they passed the lip of the back of the truck, they saw more Regulators, but something was horribly wrong with them. It's best described as follows:

As they came up, Russell was about to brief the Regulators on what was going to happen when Brisa shouted, "Oh my God!" The new Regulators looked at them with distorted faces. They lacked noses, and it looked like their skin was peeling off their faces. Deep sunk eyes and it looked like one of them was glowing. April even lifted her face plate to see oh yes, she WAS glowing. Brian of all people took out his stun gun and readied it for action

April: "What they Hell are these guys?!"

Brian: [looking at his companions] "They're the Ghouls aren't they?"

Brisa: "That's not radiation poisoning, that's…..that's leprosy. Severe leprosy/"

April: "That and bioluminescence symbiosis of unknown type. But Brisa, what does that? Radiation doesn't do that to people. What does?"

Devon: "You guys are being very rude. Talking about people in front of them." They looked at her with astonishment. This was the most stunning thing any of them had ever seen, and they'd seen platypuses!

There were two of these presumed Ghouls, and one of them spoke: "Ahem!"

The not-glowing Ghoul: [gravelly voice] "I'm Phillip Gussman, the radio operator, and this is…."

Definitely glowing Ghoul: [not so gravelly voice, but definitely female] "Jane Perm, your reconnaissance. I take it you've never seen a Ghoul before?"

Gussman: "Hey, hey, I'm not a fucking mutant, I'm a burn victim. And so are you. And no they probably haven't seen one of us before, they just came out of the 101, see?" he flashed a flashbeam over the trio, showing their Vaultsuits and armor. April's eyes hurt from the brightness suddenly in her eyes, but the light passed quickly.

Pern: "City boys?"

Gussman: "Two girls and a boy."

Devon: "Gussman, what did I just tell them about talking about people in front of them?"

Gussman: "Yes, yes Beatrice, I get you." He turned to them, "Howdy, folks, I'm Phillip Gussman, I am not a Ghoul. 'Ghouls' do not exist but its term you get used to."

Pern: "Phillip, burn victims don't go running around full bore for a hundred years with skin sloughing off the whole time and you know it. And I fucking glow like a nightlight."

Gussman: [looking daggers at her] "I am not a mutant, I am a human fucking being and no one is going to take that away from me, ever! You hear me?! I'm a cranky ass old man, a cranky ass old man who has special needs who wants to get my killing on tonight."

Russell intervened at this point, putting himself in front of the 'Ghouls' and said, "Sorry for the belated introduction children, but….well, we had to get on the road."

Brisa asked, "Does Mr. Gussman, do they need medical attention? I have some synth skin I could spray on the worst affected areas….."

Russel: "No, no he's fine."

Gussman: "No, I'm as fine as medical bills will allow. I'm in a lot of pain, I just get used to it. But in all honest, you'd just use up all your skin grafting supplies trying to treat me. So don't worry about it."

Brisa: "I'm sorry to hear about all that, Mr. Gussman….um, as two of us are doctors, is there any special medical advice April and I need to know before treating you or others like you?"

Gussman looked at Pern, Pern looked at Gussman. They shrugged their shoulders, finally Pern said, "I guess just be careful not to handle us too roughly. The upper skin has a tendency to rip." Brisa shuddered and April felt sick at the thought. When she recovered Brisa spoke.

Brisa: "I'm, I'm sorry, but after this mission, we're going to have to go someplace where we can get caught up with all the healthcare issues on the topside. It may not be out of our league, but we need medical briefing. Substantial medical briefing."

Russell smiled, "And you'll get it. We're not expecting too much trouble tonight, but it's a good thing to bring along back up. "

Pern: "And that's where you're wrong, King We've got a big problem, a HUGE problem. The sewer below us is a trap. A huge, probably first generation trap."

Howard: "You mean a feral trap?"

Devon: "How many? How emaciated are we talking about?" She readied her grenade launcher in a sign of apprehension.

Wong: "Well at least we finally found the thing. Go on Regulator Pern."

Pern: "I've already sent my report to Greyditch so at least we all know the score. Clenaup team is slated to come in as soon as we neutralize the area. This is going to be very dangerous to clear out. Now," the glowing Jane Pern began to talk to all of them, pacing, "I'm going to answer all of your questions quickly. A Feral Trap is where somebody real bright thought it would be a real capital idea to put in a bunch of radioactive waste down in sewer and disused subway tunnels to trap ferals. This wasn't in fact a good idea for a lot of reasons, but in the first few years after the war, the damn ferals outnumbered the living. No place on the east coast was safe from them. Now, Ghouls metastasize radiation, they eat it, sometimes in lieu of food. They can sense radiation, they're drawn to it, even though it makes Ghoulification worse. These things seem to have lost the ability to climb and open doors, but they may have been soaking up rads for a 100 straight years. They certainly weren't doing anything else when me and Lor scouted the place. It seems to be sewer monitoring station, with potentially lots of salvage."

April: "Why take it?"

Pern: "What?"

April: "Look, I know something about ferals from GNR. I don't know what they look like, but the impression I get is fast zombies. Why not let them in peace? Or at the very least try and kill them with something other than a direct assault? Suck all the Oxygen out and suffocate them or something. Or use explosives? Or at the least use a flamethrower?" Pern looked almost disgusted at the amount of violence circling in April's head.

Pern: "And what pray tell is your experience in dealing with deranged mutants?"

April: "I play Wasteland Warrior. And VaulTec's Fallout training simulator. America's number 1 post-nuclear survival simulator. I've gotten some actual training. Kinda. And that's why for melee enemies you want to man-stop them before they can close range. Bullets wound but they aren't overwhelming for an unthinking or fearless enemy. Mass attacks require, well, something massive in response. And with tight quarters, instant and constant killing power is a must. Unless you're working with conventional flamethrowers with 10 seconds worth of fuel, instead of plasma based designs, a flamethrower or mines would be a better bet than conventional small arms."

Pern: "Ever had a tunnel collapse on you in one of those sims?"

April: [shyly] "I'm guessing that why you want conventional arms?"

Pern: "You're smart. Maybe doctor potential. " Then she continued for the rest of the group, "Now, leaving this nest alone would be an option under normal circumstances, but this place leads all over Springvale. It's a great means of getting around, and if we can get it cleaned up, it's a great place to store supplies, house refuges, create a field office. That and the raiders are using explosives at the school, which means they probably want to get into the Vault, and we just can't have that."

Brisa's ears perked up and so did all of her body language: "They're using high explosives to get into the Vault?!"

Pern: "Yeah, I figured that's why guys from the 101 would be out here. You're not?" April attempted to speak but Brisa was having none of it

Brisa: "Yes…kinda. There was an explosion in the reactor room and a lot of rats and rad-roaches got into the vent shafts…..do you have proof?"

Pern: "Maybe, but let me continue. Ok then, those explosions are getting the Ghouls all up and edgy. They can't climb, but they've started to dig, and if they get loose into someone's old basement that'll mean everyone outside of Megaton will be at risk of being swarmed by 50 or so of these suckers. We can't have that either."

Wong: "So instead of us liquidating the school, you want us to go on a rat hunt? Hmph! Why not get the ferals under the school and eliminate two birds with one stone?"

Pern: "No direct link into the school. If there was one, they blew it up, on accident I reckon because it took out the eastern third of the building with it."

Shortly thereafter, they headed down the manhole, Pern first and Devon behind with her grenade launcher to watch the truck. Russell specifically asked for the services of RL-3 as he did had a short range hydrolytic flamethrower as his point defense weapon. April thought this unspeakably stupid as they had flashlights not night vision equipment. Pern pointed a bony finger for the trio to set up shop in case of wounded, Gussman followed.

April: [to Gussman] "Why's the radio guy coming with us?"

Gussman unholstered his submachine gun, a 10mm from the look of its boxy body and short banana clip. He smiled with nasty teeth and a missing nose but it was meant to be good intentioned from his voice "Protection." He reholstered it on his hip. Apparently it was a magnetic clip because there was no holster. April had one on her back and on her belt area for carrying capacity.

April stepped forward ahead of him and nearly tripped over something, a bucket probably that she failed to see while looking at Gussman. He grabbed her quickly and pulled her to the floor while holding his hand over her mouth, which wasn't nearly as smelly as she thought it would be. "Keep quiet," he said very annoyed, "Ferals are down in the sublevels, but they can hear. You got it?" He let her go.

April nodded and whispered "Sorry. Real life stealth isn't my strong suite."

Gussman: [whispering] "You'll get stealthier, or you'll get dead. Sorry kid, stand up heroism just makes you a target. Now, let's see if I can find this… come with me." They snuck away from the other two, who hadn't noticed their departure. One of the other rooms, and it was curious to see so much room in what was built as a sewer, there was a dirty at and this HUGE thing on it, but seeped in blood. "There it is, exactly where Lor said he did it." April gasped at its size, "You seem like interesting people little girl, so here's your first look at a Supermutant."

Beyond the smell of iron in the blood, which was nearly overpowering, she saw a frame of a body nearly three and a half feet across at the shoulders and nine and three quarters feet tall from head to foot. Greenish skin, hairless, wait, no, some vellus hair she felt through her gloves as she touched it's exposed chest area.

Gussman looked at her, and said "Whatcha think?"

April was too stunned to think for a second, then she stammered out: "I, I think this is a victim of bioemgineering. And obviously they laid down and had their throat slit. I'm guessing photosynthetic symbiants account for the green coloration….as a means supplemental nutrition, I heard about this among some of the countercultures from before the sealing, and I'm guessing super concentrations of hemogoblin from the iron smell. I've never smelled anything so intense from blood before….." she flipped up her faceplate and saw just how dark it was once again and covered her mouth because just the iron smell was gaging. She started breathing through her mouth and that took care of most of the smell.

Gussman: "At least they don't shit, right?

April looked at him through the darkness, "It doesn't appear to have any offal from the smell. Here, let me take a look….." she rolled the huge corpse until the creature's face was in the pool of its own blood. She flipped her faceplate back over her head and took out a scalpel from her pack and began to cut the trousers off the mutant. "Thank God I have gloves for this," she said as she felt the anal walls. This along with biofeedback coming in from the fingertips, she said, "No. There's no fecal matter in the anus whatsoever. Here…." She stuck her finger in the creature's ass, and Gussman smiled real big "You're a pervert Phillip Gussman! I kinda like that." They both chuckled at this, and when that subsided.

"Well, no fecal matter in the sphincter either. Walls seem nice and strong though. What is it, do these things eat garbage and dry shit anything they can't digest?" She pulled her finger out and wiped it on the trousers of the mutant, although that wasn't strictly necessary. Gussman shrugged.

Gussman: "Wouldn't surprise me. Now, can you tell me if it's true?" April looked confused, "That they're all its. They don't have anything…..down there."

April nodded and tried to push the mutant over to its front, but that was going nowhere. Gussman got down beside her and they with great effort, rolled the thing back on its side, which was bad because Gussman slipped on the blood, being nearer the slit throat and banged his knee loudly on the steel floor. His mouth was about to make a howl, but in light of the threat down below, the sound that came out of his mouth was bitter and forlorn and soft as a breeze.

April: "Are you alright?"

Gussman: "EEEEEEEEEEE…yeah, just…..eeeeeeeee…gimmie a second….."

April grimaced, then looked back at the corpse, and cut away at the front of the trousers, the trousers, if such a word could apply to such rough and worn cloth. She cut away the cloth and saw….nothing. "Weird", she said" "there's neither a penis nor a vaginal opening," she felt around, "Oppsie! There's the urethra….." her hands glided across the lower belly, under the chest plate, and got a reading, "Well, Gussman, are you with me?"

Gussman gasped, then said, "Yeah, I've got the pain mostly out."

April: "Well, as it turns out, this one seems to have ovaries. I think. Biometrics indicates it based on comparative size, but I'd need to dissect this thing to find out for sure."

Gussman: "Goddamn….that's a woman?"

April: "I'm….I'm not sure I'd go that far. If they are ovaries, they are very small, atrophied, and not simply for the size of the creature…..Phillip, have you ever seen one of these creatures, in life and up close?"

Gussman: "Yeah, they tend to leave us Ghouls alone. We don't smell right. Not sure why, other than the rotting. Hey, funny story, back when we first saw these things, once we figured out they wouldn't attack us, there was this scav, I think her name was Andover, can't remember her first name, well, she….she must've been into muscles a little too much, and she left with us, my and a couple of guys who saw we could scavenge as much as we could carry and these Ivy Leaguers didn't give a shit. Well she went up to one of them, standing alone, on some kind of sentry duty. She actually wanted to be taken with them. Started complaining if she had to be a mutant she wanted to be ten foot tall and full of muscles. Then she whined, and started crying. It was embarrassing, but I couldn't stop watching it."

April: "Ewww, she wanted to be, THIS?"

Gussman: "Eh, I give her the benefit of the doubt and think she thought the women Supermutants have boobs. Easy mistake, they all look like men."

April: "Is that's what's funny?"

Gussman: "Naw, what's absolutely hilarious is the Supermutant tells her to stop crying, it was freaking him, it, whatever, out. He brushes off this tear and she kisses him and starts HITTING on him, asking him if he has a girl back home and circling her finger on his arm. And he goes BLAM! Punches her straight into a steel beam. [he starts laughing] Shit she flew straight horizontal like a stunt dummy in a kung fu movie!"

April: [starting to chuckle herself]: Like that one bad guy in the first big fight of _Enter the Serpent's Tail_? Right into the beam and cracked it and nearly destroyed the dojo? Like that?" Her laughter intensified at the thought. "So goofy, and yet amazing…."

Gussman: "Kiddo, it was better! Shit better keep this quiet but yeah, better. He hit her so hard I could feel her family crying."

April [trying to keep it down] "Bwahahaha!"

Gussman: "Goddamn! Hahahaha!"

April: [quickly coming to her senses] "Did she die?"

Gussman: "Naw, just some internal bleeding; course it would have been funnier if she had!"

April: [instantly concerned] "You find death that funny?"

Gussman: "So will you if you survive out here."

April: "Now, don't take me for some pinko panty waist, I can find death funny, for my enemies, but for people not my enemies, well, not so much."

Gussman: "Oh really, let me ask you this, what are YOU going to do when you see an Ivy Leauguer rip off a dead man's head and suck the eyeballs out of his skull and eat them like grapes and then throw the skull behind 'im?"

April [cringing and starting to laugh in abject horror]: I don't…

Gussman: "That's the kind of thing that puts a smile on your face in the Capital Wasteland."

April: [contorted smile, still in horror] "I'm not laughing, I…I just don't know how to react to seeing something that fucked up."

Gussman: "That's the thing. None of us know how to react to something that fucked up."

This stopped the conversation for a while. There were still no gunshots, no signs the crew was engaging with the 'ferals'. April stepped away from the body and Sat down cross legged on the steel floor and buried her head in her hands. Gussman came over and stood up after trying to crouch and deciding his knees didn't approve.

Gussman: "Well, to be honest, this is why we have to liquidate the raiders as soon as possible. Supermutants have their smell. We're gonna kill them, or the Leaguers are gonna make em play ball."

April didn't respond.

Gussman: "Yeah kid, those games of yours aren't going to prepare you for what you're going to see here. I used to play them; they barely mentioned rape, showed generic torture. One day you're gonna see a man walking down the road pleading for your help with his asshole ripped inside out to his knees and if you try and help him, they'll either be a bomb in his stomach or a sniper will be waiting to take off your head."

April looked up, disgusted, then put her hands over her head again.

Gussman: [after a moment] "Hey, I've never done anything like that. But I've seen it. More than once."

April looked up at him and finally whispered out, "I don't believe you."

Gussman: "Don't believe me?" he seemed to cock and eyebrow but April wasn't making face contact, her head again under her hands.

April: "Gussman," she spat, "people like that are too psychotic to be alive. Those kind of people are hunted down without any sort of mercy. There is no room on this earth for people who do things like that."

Gussman: "Oh, you think I'm telling you snipe hunt stories, Campfire stuff? Well….I can't blame you in a way. My brother Bill, he fought in the Yangtze campaign, said he'd seen things I'd never understand. Not me, I understood plenty. But no, no you don't understand. We aren't simply in the playground for the Frankensteins and the ferals; we're the dumping ground of every bigot, hatemonger, criminal scumbag and nihilistic cultist Maryland and Virginia can produce. Except the Swampfolk, and the Free State is going to drive them here sooner or later you can count on it. The Blight, I think it drives people crazy. You can find anywhere to hide in. All you need is a bit of power and access to a replicator, then you got food and nothing to do but take chems and drink foul water till the radiation eats your brain. Good people tend not to come to the Exclusion Zone, and we have to deal with the bad ones to make sure they don't leave. That's FUSA life: Regulator, Demo Teams, Urban Defense, Metro Patrols. We can't save the world, we can't even save ourselves. But we get up and try anyway."

April: "Why, in the fuck, are you telling me this on my first day out of the Complex, out of safety? Are you trying to make me want to go back and suck the Overseer's dick? Fuck him, and fuck you. No, not you, your stories." She got up, "Thank you Gussman, for showing me this mutant. I'm going to get my friend Brisa and we're going to be looking at this after we get the infirmary set up."

Her feet clattered loudly on the steel as she walked

Gussman: "Keep it down, kid"

April: "For fuck's sake Gussman, if they're that far down the ferals can't hear us. And what the fuck it this waiting shit?! It's been ten, twenty minutes of nothing!"

April was shaking when she found Brisa, who had mostly deployed her medical kit was making sure everything was intact.

Brisa: [Annoyed] "Oh there you are...[seeing April's face and slight shuddering]….are you OK?"

Brian looked up from where he was sitting on the floor and said, "You're not OK, are you?"

April breathed in deeply then said "Old man mutant was trying to fuck with me."

Brian: "He tried to fuck you?"

April: "No Brian, open your fucking ears, he tried to tell me, in graphically inappropriate detail that we're going to be dealing with sadistic death cults. The kind that worship Pazazu and Azeal the Noodly One." She wigged her fingers for effect

Brian: "That was uncalled for!"

Brisa: "See? Going outside was dangerous. I told you."

April: "Also, one of the Ghouls murdered a supermutant in its sleep. You gotta see this thing. It's like 10 feet tall, has to weigh at least five, six hundred pounds…. "

And then the gunshots came. A lot of gunshots, mostly assault rifle but some sounds of shotguns….and a train whistle, at least a model train whistle.

April: "Oh this I got to see." Brisa threw her an unopened medical bag. "I'll find you guys a good corpse to study!" And she ran off into the darkness.

Which was not dark for her. It was a dingy place to be sure but her HUD was more than able to translate some EM signals into usable sight. The sounds of the gunshots were getting louder and frankly she remembered she didn't have any ear protection on her. But then she heard the explosions and an ominous "Ah" sound. Over and over. It was nearly inhuman, and sounded excited, the way a hunter sounds when he's found prey. Where was it coming from? The Tunnel led in many directions so she ran through, trying not to wonder what all the pipes were for.

She found them at the top of some stairways chucking grenades down the sides at their prey and spraying others with automatic fire. This didn't stop the…things rushing towards them. They were fast, real goddamn fast. It was impossible to see in the haze of smokeless gunpowder and April could have sworn the false color on her HUD had a distortion effect that made seeing these ferals clearly an impossible task.

She wedged in between Pern and another Regulator whose face she did not see, as they were all looking down, and saw a glowing, thing, a massive hunchbacked…..humanoid thing that looked like one could see it's skull in black against the bioluminescence, because radiation doesn't glow pale yellow like that. It came up the stairs to the deck where the stairs turned, and titled its head back and raised its arms.

Suddenly, Pern Swore something half heard and jumped down on the beast dragging it down the bottom of the stairwell as a massive Whoosh! Came from under the Regulators, nearly knocking back April and making the click of her PipBoy's built in Geiger counter spike. She nudged the shoulder of one of the Regulators. It was Madoff, and he nearly shrieked a her, "WHA?"

April: [over the gunfire] "Did that thing just release a radiation bomb on us?!"

Madoff: [also over the gunfire] "Yeah, so I hope you 101 fucks brought some Rad-Away!"

"Hold Fire!" she heard someone say, but wasn't sure who it was. But she could see why: Pern was on the ground at the bottom of the stairwell wrestling with the biolumanent thing, as it hissed and growled. It was much bigger than her and she was losing the physical confrontation. Suspecting that they couldn't see properly in the dark, despite both Pern and the thing glowing like nightlights, April hopped over the railing and down to the landing, which hurt more than she suspected. But her gun was out, and she turned the safety off.

At this point Pern was screaming as the thing was biting into her neck and face with dog like ferocity. April's VATS system kicked in and she saw she had a clear shot at the back of its head over its massive hunchback. She shot as fast as semi-auto would let her. This was actually pretty fast as ten bullets when slamming into the things back and head. It clearly hurt the beast, and as it was about to reveal, mortally. But it was so crazed it looked back as April started to think about reloading and jumped near her hissing and growling with that 'Ah' sound. April always remembered this as sounding more accusing than anything else.

April screamed a half scream and tried to empty more bullets into the thing only to hear a lot of clacks. Thoroughly panicked because this thing was at least a head taller than her and probably could use the whole of its strength, something a normal human being simply couldn't for fear of injury, April darted into a tunnel near bottom stair, too panicked to care where it went. And in fact it didn't go very far, maybe 50 feet to a dead end with a bunch of barrels and leaking muck onto the floor. Her Geiger Counter started to click as she came near them, so she stopped.

April made several 'uhh' sounds as the creature followed her at a slowed pace. She couldn't see it because of the slight turns of crooked corridors, but she could hear it. Unable to think clearly, she let her Colt and medical bag drop to the floor and brought out her Compliance Regulator and readied it. When the glowing thing appeared through the doorway into this annex, she let the thing have it. Three shots directly in the chest. It fell over like a tuckered out cat, just fell on its side, exhausted, defeated.

This is when April first got a look at a 'feral ghoul.' It was glowing, completely naked, with skin peeling off in layers. Its hunchback was so large that to even call it volleyball size was not to do it justice. Its hair was gone, and gone everywhere, head, public area, armpit, just gone. Its skeletal frame was emaciated, and it's looked like the skin that wasn't falling off was covered in sores and lumps. There were no ears, no nose, and what looked like the penis was gone too but the testicles remained.

April: [kneeling down by the creature]: "My God, what are you?"

Pern: [from down the corridor] "April! Get away from it! Get away!"

April wondered why, maybe disease or….

The hunch exploded. This made no sense to April, even as she was knocked back hard against the barrels. The clicking was terrible, the prickliness on her skin was worse; she knew she was in trouble. Worse, she was starting to black out, she tried to get up, but nothing was cooperating with her. The next thing she remembered was Pern pulling her away from the barrels, and she tried desperately to grab her medical bag where the Rad-X was. Pern was trying to talk with her, then Pern was trying to get her to swallow large Rad-X pills best taken as suppositories, and all the while through the pain in her head and the dizziness she kept saying:

"Radiation doesn't do that….Radiation doesn't do that..."


	6. Pure Intention (side story)

Pure Ambitions

L'enfant Terrible

The good doctor made his way through the waterlog of East Potomac Park Island. At 10 feet in elevation, it was hard to tell if the river was reclaiming the fill island, or the beavers had scored their first big victory against the zombie pumps of the DC grid. Regardless, it was wet, sticky, humid, and wonderful. In the summer heat, the thick cypress trees provided shade to the sound of singing birds. Unlike 20 years ago, there were few of the cherry blossom trees and other exotic trees, nor the pleasant hardwoods that had marked the park in the halcyon days of civilization. The ones that were left were even higher up on little hillocks, as the waters had risen and stagnated. DC was losing the battle with the bog from which it came. He wasn't sure how to feel about that.

Then it occurred to him that there could be pythons in the muck. Burmese Pythons, the kind that swallowed alligators whole. Well...too late now. Besides, there were so many things that could kill a person in Washington DC that large snakes seemed too surreal to take seriously. Still, the ground seemed to become a little more unsure, a little more treacherous. He could see the dome of the Memorial in the distance, but only through spaces in the trees, and only well above him.

With a sudden rapidity, the trees gave way. This was the right term, as the thick forest almost entirely stopped, and gave way like unto a glade. The tree roots under one foot, fern and grasses under the other. There stood the Jefferson Memorial, just as he'd left it a generation ago. Instead of a ruined Pantheon, pipes and industrial scaffolding covered the building side on his right and would continue all around to the unseen northern half. Still somewhat protected by the trees and the fact he was covered to nearly his neck in mud and filth ( _not filth...muck. The stuff of life_ , he told himself), he took wrist computer, a PipBoy rigged for medical diagnosis, and checked for biometrics.

It was unlikely that mutants would be found on this island, as there was no settlement to pillage, and it was easier to get to DC through the subway tunnels, it did not behoove a middle age man to be reckless. And there were signs on his monitor: Supermutants, but not on the island. No, to the east on the Marina, in cover away from the Brotherhood sharpshooters from up to the Washington Monument, waiting to waylay travelers too cocky or too cheap or too poor to pay the boat fare at Pentagon City or Port Reagan, which had been Reagan National Airport.

He thought about trying to snipe them with his rifle he'd picked off a dead...someone...in Chevy Chase, but decided against it in the same way a modern person decides it's prudent not to light a wasp hive with a cheap lighter. Yes, if you succeeded you'd do the world a mighty good. But to realistically to come out of it for the better, it is best to come back better armored and with much heavier firepower.

He kept under the scaffolding, using the shadows as cover. The Supermutants had a keen sense of smell, but their eyesight was even better. And worst of all, they could 'hear' EM disturbances: leave a radio, a radar, a tracking device, even a local GPS on long enough, they'd hone in on your position, just out of curiosity. So the good doctor skulked at the base, crawling over the small horizontal girders, suppressing both a yelp of pain and the urge to swear when attempted to bound one and fell flat on his is face onto the hard ground. It wasn't manliness, it was fear, and when he had this realization, it hit him for the first time there were things he missed about the Vault, and all the people he left behind. He stumbled as he attempted to move forward; he was not by nature a deft creature, so when his mind was distracted, so went his skill. He bowed a bit in exhaustion, clasped his head and let mud splattered glove move down to a beard that had grown far too salt and pepper for his taste. He felt the small smear lines on his face, little stripes of the cool on the length of his cheek.

"I'm so sorry Catherine. I'm so sorry to everyone. The right path is never easy, and it's not even clear anymore. But we have a chance here, we really do." This was something of a mutter, something of a prayer, something of plea for forgiveness from the sin of rashness. But as his eyes glistened as his hand left his face, there was no doubt it was not said in penitence.

After that he sighed in a big breath and nearly sprinted over and under to the west side of the grand stairs. Between the puffing for air and the fact sweat was pouring down his face and refusing to evaporate, the good doctor was annoyed. There was a gift shop entrance on the east side of the stairs, but frankly, the west side could not be seen from the marina or any vantage point of the Washington Channel, which meant no Supermutants could see him and he could loiter. He detached his backpack and leaned against the wall, right next to the door into the gift shop area, though far enough away if a Supermutant should burst out he could easily and cleanly fire into its face until it was dead. With one muddy boot on the side of the building and one on the ground, he took out two bottles of water. One was clear and looked cool to drink, although it most certainly was at least warm. The other was unfiltered and dirty. The good doctor uncapped the second and held the first in his teeth and he poured the brownish water over his gloved hands and then over his body. The Geiger counter of the PipBoy clicked slightly as it ran down his hands, but this was no one's surprised: the DC water system was radioactive throughout the former beltway, and unsafe to drink for a whole host of other reasons. The muck dropped off all off this like it was running away. All Vault clothes were made hydrophobic; it a pinch he could have sealed his Vaultsuit at the ankles and around the neck, swam across the Potomac and come out completely dry but for his face and hair. Not all the muck was gone, but a few swipes of the hand sent it away in dribbles. He finished again by washing his gloves and he was clean again.

The other water bottle was uncapped in turn and drank deeply, then inhaled deeply, then drank again. There was something out the sticky heat of summer that brought out the boy in him, made him happy on some very primitive level. But his body was used to a chill 65 degrees, with the slightest puffs of air through a very mechanical ventilation system, which meant he needed more fluids than usual as it adjusted to the outside. After the last satisfying slip, where he was determined to get the very most out of the very last, he wiped his beard on reflex, put both bottles on the ground and then took from his pack a full carton of cigarettes, pre-war. He took a pack and let the backpack and carton fall at his feet.

"I know I know, Catherine!" He said to his very much alive wife whom he had left behind "I said I was kicking the habit for the baby, and I meant it. But that was 20 years ago and our babies are all grown up now. But I don't blame you for not coming with me; at least you'll all be safe in the Complex." He lit the cigarette with a thick lighter. At first it didn't respond, then roared up and would have scorched his eyebrows had his head not been moved back as though he knew this was a possibility. He shook it and pressed on the side "Damn it cell, don't get goofy on my now." It lit properly in a small flame and the good doctor took a long slow drag: the kiss of long reunions.

"Besides," he continued, "I just spent the last day and a half crawling through the Metro system smeared with Ghoul runoff and shambling like a degenerate trying not to get shot by the Ivy Leaguers," he pointed expressively behind him towards the eastern bank of the Washington Chanel. "Nearly everything is overrun these days, and some of the older buildings have started to collapse into the roadways. Springvale to Megaton to Chevy Chase to Rivet City to the bottom of this goddamned island through the marsh to here. I was not about to let my, our children go through all this, what were you thinking Catherine?! [Sigh] Although I must say without the lights in my goddamned face 24 hours a day, I slept swimmingly at the Weatherly." He sat there and slowly finished his cigarette, taking his time, trying to savor the nicotine. He was getting more agitated. His eyes darted around and he couldn't help of thinking of the children...grown children at the end of their vocational training, he reminded himself...he'd left in the Vault. He felt really shitty about that, but considering the Capital was even WORSE than when he'd left it a generation ago, he wasn't sorry a bit. He collected his things, then used his old ID card to get into the Gift Shop.

The fact that gift shop door bolted behind him was not a good sign. That it did so immediately was an even worse sign. He pushed gently on the push bar of the door and it wouldn't budge. His first thought was slavers. But, as he considered it, he realized that there would have been signs of habitation, evidence of wanting to take in refugees: traders and scavengers were generally more trouble than they were worth, and besides, having been listening to GNR promos, the 'The Adventures of Dashing Dashwood' was basically telling people with even a modicum of mechanical knowhow how to disarm their neck collars. Public service announcements as promos for entertainment: he liked Three Dog's style, that's for sure.

Which left other, less pleasant possibilities. Whoever was here WAS here and didn't fly an American flag: the symbol of truce and trade. By the customs of the Capital Exclusion Zone, this meant no custom or law protected him. So he crouched over, activated his Stealth Boy, and brought out the Bowie knife. As he came into the main corridor, he saw the turret system was just as he left it. A system of .223 ceiling mounted turrets that looked much scarier than they actually were; they were presents of the pre-war government. He tossed a baseball over to one side, saw the turret swivel a bit to track it and thought of his next move. It hadn't seen him, but the turrets in pre-war designs were always traps: the sound of them going off was deafeningly loud to alert whatever complex they were in, and there were several consoles where one could in theory deactivate them, which, if his new hosts were tech savvy in the least, would silently confirm an intruder's presence to their headquarters. So he made a calculated bet that the hosts were not cannibalistic cultists, nor raiders who wanted to hunt the most dangerous game, nor slavers. He left the console alone. And sneaked by with minimal effort.

Fearing to go into the maintenance tunnels were Brotherhood knights had bunked once, he made his way to the door to the control room in the old rotunda. There was a thick and heavy door that had to be opened. He opened it with perfect quiet, slowly, carefully. After all, that door had been a protective friend once, back when the Brotherhood was fighting off mutant harassment.

It did no good. In front of him, but out of lunging distance was a perfectly intact sentry bot. Sentry bots, heavily armored, wheeled drones had a head, and bright red eyes and a voice box. And it was designed so that people would shoot at the head while the AI was stored under six inches of ceramic graphene composite, further protected by a webbing of spider silk polymer, the same stuff his Vault Suit was made out of.

The bot, with the cold, mechanical, deep voice designed to intimidate with its inhumanity, said "Please come to the control array, [unknown civilian]."

This was both good news and bad. Sentry bots on the fritz, and there were many of them in the Capital, often spoke when attacking, but never said that. Someone was linked in. This also meant that the hosts were either Free State Consortium, in which case he could be summarily executed for violating the ban on travel into the Capital Exclusion Zone, or not, as the officer had the prerogative, or the new Brotherhood Outcasts in which he might be forced to dismantle his previous life's work, or worse still, which he didn't dare to name...

He came to the control array, escorted by the sentry bot, its three Wheelikes squeaking behind him. Although, it was nice to stand and be seen: Vault medicine was fantastic, but being out of practice sneaking, his back hurt. The woman in front of him had her back to him had long dark hair in a ponytail, which flowed down the back of a Vault issued Lab Coat with the herald of the Commonwealth emblazoned on it, at least that which was visible beyond her hair which went straight back to nearly to the lower back. The stars of the American flag, 13 Betsy Ross stars dancing around the giant middle, the Unity Star with 13 stripes extending down, red and the white of the labcoat in pristine condition. A labcoat like that was unstainable, untearable, and would not fade unless it was burned to ash. She wore a flat, simple wide brimmed brown hat, obviously of post war, non-industrial manufacture. The turned around to face him with a flourish and extended her hand. She wore cat eye glasses that instantly did a VATS scan on him, which he could see in the eyeglass.

"Dr. St. Vincent, I presume?"

Her face was old, but not weathered, not physically. And right away he could see the true signs of Vault Elder: minimal wrinkling with two shocks of gray-white hair from the temples and only from the temples. The mark of the vain; but what woman wants to look old? He stuck out his hand in return and gracefully bowed and kissed her gloved hand, which surprised her. What surprised him is that the gloves were thick and sturdy fighting gloves, not the thinner, more tactile purple ones like what he wore in the medical lab and was wearing now

Dr. St. Vincent: "The pleasure is all mine my lady, though I am at a disadvantage as to your name."

Charm works. She giggled like a horny schoolgirl for a second, but only for a second. "I am Dr. Charlotte Merriweather. I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Now this scared the piss out of James. He put his backpack down to give his back a rest.

"Enclave?!" he said with horror. So much horror that he recoiled away from her hand, though he was graceful enough to left her hand drop gently, rising the hand enough to tell her what he was going to do.

Merriweather: "No. New California Republic. New California Republic, United States of America. And before you ask, I have been...a guest of the Enclave before, so I understand your paranoia. But no, I'm a United States Marshal, and I really am from the government and I really AM here to help. That is, should you choose."

Dr. St. Vincent: (warily, but losing much of the aback posture): From California, you say? Alright, assume I believe you. And given the difficulty of getting here overland, how pray tell did you get here. And why?"

The last question really dug in into his friendly tone. To someone like James St. Vincent, all governments were to be questioned and they were all equally dangerous on principle.

Merriweather: "Well Doctor, we came here on a Gerald Ford class supercarrrier. It's somewhere off the coast and I'm not at liberty to say more."

James: "California can build a supercarrier?"

Merriweather: "Nope. It was sold to us by Hawaii Civil Defense, which used to be the civilian heart of the Enclave. They kicked them out after Arroyo's finest blew up their command derrick. In any case, it was a way of cementing ties. There's some committee on both sides trying to figure out how to merge our governments. Expect I'll be in my grave before they come out with a working compromise."

Dr. St. Vincent: (utterly confused) "I'm sorry; I don't understand any of that."

Merriweather: "Well you asked a complicated question. The point is, we're here because we can. It's an exploratory expedition. We've mapped and made formal contact with many Latin American communities down and up both sides of Straights of Magellan, exchanged ambassadors with some of the bigger ones. We're also here to make sure your local chapter of the Brotherhood doesn't provide support or shelter to the West Coast branch, as we've been at war with them for almost a decade and we don't want vengeful xenophobes plotting revenge across the country we aim to reunify. But Lyons seems like a square type, albeit I know him only by reputation. 50 years ago there were a lot more like him. Unfortunately, they kept getting sent east. It's going to make reconquering the Plains Commonwealth a real bitch."

"That said, now that we're here and getting Enclave signals, we going to find them and put a stop to them. There's a lot to hate about the Enclave, even for primed and...I use this term loosely because there's not a smidgeon of truth in it, 'pure' humanity. The Enclave runs 'pure' humanity like Baltimore but even worse: it's spotlessly clean but about as oppressive as a slave pen. They don't put a collar on you like the local slavers; they drown you in debt to your eyeballs."

James: "Just like in Baltimore. Somehow that doesn't surprise me. When I was in my residency, I knew a lot of us who ran off to join Enclave recruiters in dark bars and private homes. They...well...it seems no gift from them comes without strings attached. Strings far and away out of proportion. And they will collect no matter what. For those reasons I've always been keen to avoid them. And it's also why I'm wary of any help any so called American government has to offer. I believe in America, I just think it's an idea best not befouled by power hungry bullies."

Merrwieather: "Are you testing me by implying I'm a bully?"

James: "Not at all." (This was a lie) "It's just that the over enthusiastic about government tend to be of a bad sort. Or a really good sort. One always needs to be wary.

Merriweather bowed her head in thought, "This is a good point." She lifted her head. "Frankly Dr. St. Vincent, you're right. Government, like war, brings out the best and worst in us. Didn't Abraham Lincoln say to truly test a man, give him power?"

James: "Please, call me James."

Merriweather: "Well then James, I see what you're saying. But in the end, humans are tribalistic. Endlessly divisive until you get to the level of scroungers, motorcycle bands and rape gangs. For a state to survive it needs nation, and for a nation to survive it needs a state."

James: (concerned) "By nation you mean volk. An ethnic group."

Merriweather: "Indeed. We cannot let the Roman Empire degenerate into the Romance Kingdoms. But, before you say anything else, no government can be worse than no government at all. Not necessarily much better, but I've seen it. The American Government is a tarnished concept, and we, the people and the people in government, need to show it being run right and proper. It's not done that since the Plebiscite, and if not that, since the New Plague. You see, that's why I want to help you. I know what this Project Purity stood for. I think water pure and free is a damned good idea."

James: "And it's an excellent way to consolidate power in the region."

Merriweather: "You presume too much. Besides, you were willing to work with the Brotherhood, and had you succeed all those years ago the "Capital Wasteland" would be completely under the thumb of Owen Lyons."

James: (bowing his head) "Yes, yes I was aware of this possibility. Madison...Dr. Li, in particular thought Elder Lyons is a nice old doddering fellow, surrounded by a group of techno-cultists."

Merriweather: "And you?"

James: (sensing the upper hand) "With the Schism between Lyons and these new 'Brotherhood Outcasts' I'm even more inclined to trust what's left."

Merriweather: (not amused) "Well then. If you'd rather throw your lot in with a warlord than the Republic, I'm not in a position to stop you." Her eyes narrowed "But I would advise you to do your homework to know how and what the 'Brotherhood benevolence' looks like in practice. Rivet City has some uplinks. Read about the reports that come out of the Midwestern Brotherhood. They rule from Terra Haute to Colorado Springs. Ohio just wrapped up a war with them; the Columbus Dispatch has a compilation of what refugees told them it was like living under feudal lords. Knights keep serfs Dr. St. Vincent. Protection always has its price."

James considered this for a moment. It stung.

James: (somewhat guiltily, as though he were saying something bitter and vile): "I don't think you understand what the east coast is like, Dr. Merriweather. The Institute dominates Boston, the corporations dominate Baltimore, nothing moves in Annapolis unless the Merchant Conference decides it is so. All of them and hundred others talk the same game, the same talking points. American law must be upheld where it can and all debts must be paid. The Brotherhood of Steel, as I know it, as I've seen it under Owen Lyons, has never asked for anything from the people of the Capital. Not one cent of tribute, not one law, not one conscript. They pay fair wages and keep the settlements on the river free and safe. If these are feudal lords, then so be it. They are knights in shining armor, heroes. And nothing I've heard of since I left the Vault gives me the impression anything has changed. You…maybe you're not Enclave, maybe you're one of the few to whom patriotism is not quite the virtue of the viscous. But..."

Merriweather: "But you don't trust me." [James nods sternly] "Fair enough. I come out of the blue offering the keys to paradise. And everyone you've ever met who waved the flag was something between a dickhead and a Nazi. I get that. California used to be like that. When I was young, the whole region was under assault by Supermutants…. [Noting James's surprise] not your flavor, but another local variety, all while the cities in the Central Valley were locked up tighter than a princess in a tower. They did nothing to help as the Supermutants built up an army in the north of the state. I didn't actually get permission to enter the Central Valley until well into my forties. So let me tell you how we're going to bring peace, and order most importantly restoration to the Potomac Watershed."

"First we recruit allies; then we beat back the supermutants to whatever pre-war base they crawled out of and eliminate their ability to make recruits; then we rebuild local infrastructure. Then Baltimore falls for the same reason so many come to the Capital Exclusion Zone even now despite all its problems: freedom from peonage and corporate oppression. It will happen sooner than you think, it happened in the Central Valley faster than I could have imagined. The Wasteland is free, plutocrats make everything clean but they can't make a truly safe environment for the common folk. It's not in their nature. Then, when the Brotherhood sees humanity rise in a way they can't control, they will turn on us and we will destroy them in detail. We find their bunkers, we either gas them or they blow themselves up when they learn there is no escape. I have seen it all before. I used to be a member of the Brotherhood; I tried to talk them out of it. Good intentions and past heroism doesn't count in the face of zealots who fear losing their power. Lyons will learn that, probably at the tip of a blade."

Merriweather's voice grew even more confident, for this was speech making time and a Fascist like herself loved her some rhetoric. "The flag is a powerful symbol. It attracts patriots, it makes hope bloom. There will be real democracy, democracy with the guns to protect its weakest. There will be no more useless eaters; everyone will be educated to where he is needed and the state will make sure he is paid a just wage."

James: "Sounds very fascist."

Merriweather: "You live in a libertarian paradise. Everyone has guns, no law restricts them; everyone does what is right in their own eyes. And like Hobbes said, life is brutal, nasty and short. Not to mention impoverished. The Human race doesn't advance unless it is compelled to work together. Our nature, well, raiders are our nature: take what we will and fuck everyone we don't know."

James: "You have a horrible view of humanity."

Merriweather: "Ten decades of violence and despair has shown this region the staying power of the raiders. And even so, no one can field an army to pacify the raiders, take down the supermutants, even to demolish the Blight that allows so many of them to roam free and strike at will. The Washington Naval Yard is filled to the brim with refuges. Have you seen that since you came out of the Vault?! Principle is not needed; these people need a savior. God helps them if the Enclave actually comes out in the open with a helping hand. They consider anyone born outside little radiation free bottles to be mutants. They consider Vault Dwellers like me to be full human beings and they killed one of my children and screwed up another so bad we had to grow a brainless clone and give him a body transplant."

James's eyes widened with shock at such an accusation. He didn't even know whether it was possible to believe such an accusation. He grimaced at the thought it was true because Dr. Merriweather's face and her eyes told him it was true. It lacked the 'try and say I'm a liar' look brash and aggressive people often get. Her eyes were sad and almost pleading

Merriweather: "Yeah, it was that bad. Biological warfare testing," then she continued, "Maybe they don't consider topside humans to be mutants anymore. Maybe they won't shoot ghouls on sight, at first. But I promise you, if they come here, old Ghouls will put on their uniforms from the old days, report for duty and be gunned down as they present their medals and dogtags like the Jews of Germany showed the Nazis the medals they had gotten for the Kaiser himself. That's what the Enclave is, they are worse than anything in the wasteland. And before they get rounded up and tagged like Brahmin, the people of this place will latch onto them the way a drowning man latches onto anything that will float."

James: "My intentions are pure. I want to help people, not get involved in politics. Although I am sorry for your loss. I can't imagine losing a child, certainly not like that."

Merriweather was stunned at what she took as his utter stupidity. It was idealism, but for her, all idealism was stupidity, everything was political, and power and cunning was the only means to survival. And James knew this reaction from the look of disgust she shot him with the shaking of her head. The eye roll didn't help. James St. Vincent thought it unbecoming of an old woman.

James: "Besides, the project doesn't work, it can't work. It never has worked. The only thing I can think of that MIGHT make it work is a GECK."

Merriweather laughed in genuine disbelief, "You need a Garden of Eden Creation Kit for a glorified water filter?"

James felt humiliated as well as antagonized. He hissed out a "Yes. Yes I do."

Merriweather, still in a laughing mood "Convince me. You know the local ecology better than I do. You led the project."

James: "Didn't you talk with Madison? Or Daniel? You seem to know an awful lot..."

Merriweather: "I haven't talked to any of them. I'm still a spook in DC. I want to hear from you, Doctor St. Vincent. Why a GECK? Why wasn't this in any of your reports to the Pentagon….Brotherhood Citadel."

James: "I….I didn't know a GECK even existed until this week. Last week." He began to pace "This isn't simply about pure drinking water. If it were we could have fortified this island and created another island settlement in DC. The truth is that the Potomac is badly irradiated. It's not simply the damaged and derelict DC power grid; that would be bad enough. But when the Chinese hit the east coast, they conventionally bombed the Catoctin Creek Superreactor, which went into meltdown and bombed probably the Shenandoah Valley Authority Power Complex, which looks damaged but there's too many ghouls to get an accurate read safely. None of the tributaries are bad on their own, they're quite lovely, I've seen them myself. The Shenandoah Valley is breathtaking to see, truly a lovely place. Mostly peaceful too. But then they merge and it's a wonder anything grows from there to about right here." He held out his arms.

"Here is about when the other tributaries, starting with the Anacostia, come in and swell the Potomac to double then triple again it's for width all the way down to Point Lookout. At that point, the radiation is so diluted it barely makes sense to filter it. In between, lymphoma is the number one killer of children under 14 and it seems to make the parasites even more virulent. It also feeds radiotropic symbiants in both Ghouls and Mireluks. Have you ever seen a Mireluk?"

Merriweather: "Mireluks, Doctor? There are at least three variants: bipedal Horseshoe crabs about three and a half feet tall, five foot tall snapping turtles, and then what some call Mirelurks also encompass giant cannibalistic catfish."

James: "So you have seen them?"

Merriweather: "Only in autopsy so far. We've been encountering them in various forms since we hit St. Augustine."

James: "St. Augustine?"

Merirweather: "Oldest city in the United States, on the northeastern tip of Florida."

James: "So it's still inhabited?"

Merriweather: "Do you know your history Doctor?" He nodded "Naples at its height in the reign of Constantine had 200,000 people in its metro area. In the time of Charlemagne it had 15,000 souls among the ruins. St. Augustine has less. But a city is a settlement of 5,000 so it still qualifies."

James: "Oh"

Merriweather: "We live in a Byzantine Age. That is our misfortune. Now, what about the Mirelurks?"

James: "The Mirelurks in all their forms make settlements along the river dangerous for everyone. However, without the radioactive alpha particles to sustain their radiotropic symbiots, they would effectively starve to death in short order. They're simply too large to survive on plant matter or animal matter alone. The same is true for the feral Ghouls poor things. (Poor, murderous, vicious, decrepit things…) It wouldn't stop those problems in the DC Blight, but it would stop them starting in Alexandria and down the pike."

Merriweather: "Why not put this some place further up river? Say the Montgomery County Reservoir? It's completely intact."

James: Oh, lots of reasons. It's a soft target with no fortifiable parameter without substantial construction assets, more importantly a good 40% of the radioactive particles come off the runoff of the Blight. Nuclear cars, old robots, emergency lighting, decrepit power generators. There's also the cultural benefit: Raiders seem not to want to attack monuments. It's considered bad luck. Here we have a fortified structure, a tidal basin of reserve, the river is narrow enough to fuel the entire steam through a filter line and there's not enough boat traffic upriver to cause a stir if we need to block it off with a floating line."

James's pacing picked up, and occasionally he held up his head, sometimes, he held his fingers to his temple as in thought. All in all it looked like he needed a stenographer. "All of this was working like a charm, but the problem 20 years ago was that we needed brute force to cycle in the water. We were getting the volumes, but it was going by so fast we could only get a fraction of it cleaned. The filters were clogging too rapidly to boot. What a GECK has, and we didn't, are nano-bonders specifically designed for the worst isotopes. You see, a GECK doesn't clean water; I could rig up 10,000 squirt bottles to do that and hand them off to traders and do that. No, a GECK cleans water-TABLES. As long as it has an external power source, like the DC grid, it can continue to create nano-bonders to bind and insolubate..."

Merriweather: Insolubate?

James: Yes. I mean that it pulls the isotopes out of the water, makes them insoluble and causes them to sink to the bottom of the tidal basin. We can dredge it up or not. By swishing around the river, we slow it down, clean and pump it out in one go. Bonders go out with the flow to the rest of the river as needed. It's exactly the type of thing a GECK is designed to be hooked up to. The GECK is a seeder module; it can only do limited work on its own power."

Merriweather: "New world, just add water."

James: "And we're going to give it a HELL OF A LOT of water." At this he pounded his fist on a piece of equipment. This made an utterly satisfying, and dare I say it, competent thud.

Merriweather: "Doctor St. Vincent, that's inspiring, it really is. But where are you going to find a GECK?"

James: "I don't know. I don't have any clue whatsoever where I could find one. I doubt the local Vaults have them, or they would have used them long ago."

Merriweather: "It seems I was right and wrong. I knew you were going to come through here, but I was wrong that you're not willing to work with us at this time. Maybe we offer too much, right now."

James: "All I see of this New California Republic is you and this battle droid. How about this: we part on good terms, you California people do some real good for the people of the Capital Region, make it less of a wasteland and we'll revisit the issue when we have something to really talk about? At this point, we're both all sizzle and no steak, proverbially speaking."

Merriweather: [heaving a breath of disappointment] "That will have to do. I'll be on my way then. Would you like a friendly escort to the Rivet City? The area is dangerous and the Supermutants may very well move down to the ruin."

James: "Oh no. I need to check to make sure everything is still in working order. And I need to rest. Then I'll be gone. They'll never see me even if they do come down here."

Merriweather: "You're a brave man. Or one that doesn't realize what age does the body."

James: "Vault Medicine is a hell of thing. I'm more fit now than when I went in. I wouldn't dare have ventured outside before double checking."

Merriweather: "You left your wife there; didn't you, in the 101?"

James: "It's dangerous out here. She didn't want to come. Not without the children. I wouldn't have it, they deserve better than this."

Merriweather: "No child deserves the Capital Exclusion Zone. I've never seen a place so hellishly violent. It's like a 100 years of Stalingrad after Stalingard. But Alexandria is nice; the Islands in the Chesapeake are nice. Tenpenny Tower is nice if you can get there"

James: "And afford it. But the real issue with my children is….have you ever heard the term, young, dumb and full of cum? That's my daughter…..wait no, that's totally wrong even if right in spirit. Look, my daughter is violent when she feels outrage. She'll get herself killed fighting Supermutants, trying to save some poor pregnant women from being dragged off to wherever the mutants take their prisoners. And she'll drag her poor brother with her, who is a good kid otherwise but lets himself get pulled around by April. No, I want them safe and sound. Besides, out glorious Overseer won't let anyone leave."

Merriweather smiled: "Sounds like good kids. Tell you what: I'll help you check out the machinery and make basic repairs if need be, you tell me about life in the 101. And I'll tell you about life in the 13." She popped her collar on the Vaultsuit with the number 13 on it in yellow letters. I know you can use the help, James."

James: "To say nothing of the protection. May I call you Charlotte?"

Charlotte: "Sure, what the hell?"

James: "OK, let's start with the machinery here in the rotunda, it's the most complex and is supposed to be filtered to be the most radioactive water, and….well that makes it the most complex."

Charlotte got her Pip-Boy out turned her wrist screen side up, "Technical Diagnostic begin" and a the hand mount, looking like brass knuckles with a wicked looking spike extending from the finger holes came out of the underside and she effortlessly, without looking grasping it in her fingers and began looking for portholes to check. "Dr….James he he, Dr. James, are we checking both software and hardware? And are there any locks and passcodes I need to be aware of?"

James: Oh probably; it's been 20 years, and frankly, Catherine, my wife, did a lot of the technical stuff. I was lead and more of the visionary. Ahem, Charlotte? What's the name of the 13?"

Charlotte: [sticking her spike into a slot] "Mount Whitney Complex. We had 3,000 people in the Vault, not counting the popsicles before the Enclave came. How big is the 101?"

James: "Springvale Complex has 800 people."

Charlotte: "800? Only 800?"

James: "The Overseer doesn't like to admit it but every generation or so a good third of the Vault's young leave for the Wasteland. His whole term has had the Vault in lockdown. He only let me and Catherine in because we had skills they needed."

Charlotte: "A Vault had to IMPORT skilled labor? What the fuck, pardon my French, what the heck kind of sham shoeshine operation are they running there?"

James: "Suicide and ennui are high. The lights are kept on all the time, the Overseer is an overbearing bully, we have a strict two child policy, intellectually it's not a stimulating place, commerce is strictly controlled by central administration. It's as about a planned economy as you can get. And it's so COLD. It's 65 degrees all the time. The Vaultsuits look like demin because everyone always wears liners under them to keep warm."

Charlotte: "You're not working Dr. James." He was leaning on the main console talking to her like it was a casual chat.

James: "You're right. I'm sorry; chatting around like it's a coffee break or something. Do the coffee replicators still work?"

Charlotte: "They work but they aren't necessarily stocked. Why don't you go check the standby stocks and see if they've' extruded enough coffee mix? If they have, I'd like a cold frapachino with vanilla extract."

James: "Huh, Yes, yes I can do that." [to himself] "It's like old times but with me as the coffee boy. Isn't civilization grand…"

Charlotte heard all of this, and was pleased James St. Vincent was so personable. And it wasn't a total loss. He wasn't an ally, but not likely to be a foe that had to be destroyed. And she could at least pump him for information about the 101 complex. If the New California Republic was to wrest control of the Capital Region away from the Brotherhood and not have it fall back under Free State malevolent neglect, they would need the Vaults as strongholds. So would the Enclave.


	7. Radiation Doesn't Work that Way

Radiation Doesn't Work That Way

Le Enfant Terribles

April's whole body hurt. She felt really fatigued and her stomach hurt something awful. She could tell she'd been in and out of consciousness because one second her throat was fine, and the next it was dry to the point she could taste stomach bile on her breath. So when she started moaning, it was half unaware and half trying to summon someone, anyone.

She heard a gruff voice saying "Ah, she's getting awake; about time for her to get on it and out of my clinic."

April tried to open her eyes and was blinded by the light in her eyes. She breathed in and could smell metal and sweat. Not a good combination. "Radiation….." she tried to protest and then her head hit the surface she was laying on and she blacked out again.

The next time she took in a deep breath, shot up and fell off the bed she was in. She was breathing heavily then started cursing because she tipped the bedpan over and her leg was covered in her own diarrhea.

April: "Eew, Oh God, FUCK FUCK FUCK!" she tipped the bedpan back right-side up and was astonished how much was still in it. Of course, some of it had gotten all over April's left hand and she screamed in disgust and then began to gag violently at the smell of shit and piss.

April was horse but continued to scream as Brisa come into the room and said in a very breathy way, "Oh God!" then bolted out again. The sound of her throwing up everywhere soon followed. Then came in a stern looking black man with a white beard and some towelettes.

Man: "Oh for fuck's sake, it's just a little shit. Calm down will you?!"

April quickly tried to cover her breasts and genitals, only to too late remember that this meant there was now fecal matter smeared all in her pubic hair which caused her to scream louder.

The man gave a loud groan of exasperation, then calmly came over to April's naked form and began to gently wipe the back of her legs.

Man: "Hold still." And April was still although completely grossed out and biting her lip in mortification. Gently, ever so gently, the man finished up with her legs, all up and down from the thigh to the Achilles Tendon. She took out another and cleaned off her hand and wiped the shit from her dark public hair, and said, "There now, all better?"

April: "Yeah…..yeah. Thank you."

Man: "You're welcome. I'm Doc Church, and this is my clinic, You're in Megaton. Now, don't ask questions, just walk away over past my office to the chemical shower. Use it to get yourself clean….ah ah ah….there are towels over there for you to use. Now be quick!"

April quickly scurried handing her breasts and crotch. It was a tin shack, or something like it, well lit with lights hanging from the cleanings and primitive windows cut out and glassless providing both ventilation and extra light. It looked clean enough to be a doctor's office, of some kind at least. Still, the metal walls seemed to be assembled piecemeal, bits on top of other bits.

The shower was at the end of a hall, made private by two, in use filing cabinets, at least judging from the papers sticking out of them. It was cold, metal smelling water, but it got her clean enough. When she came back Brisa was there mopping up her filth off the floor with a mop, while April's Vaultsuit was laid neatly on her bed.

April sat down, and Brisa moved away, being done, and April said "Brisa, could you turn around, but don't leave." April began to dress.

Brisa: [back to April] "You were out four days."

April: "Radiation poisoning that bad?" she asked this as she stumbled and fell into her underwear. She actually fell on the bed as she pulled her underwear on.

Brisa: "Three rounds of Rad-Away, and that's after a quarter of a bottle of Rad-X. It wouldn't have killed you, but you'd have been in a real hospital for months otherwise."

April: [putting on a cloth bra] "You don't sound good."

Brisa: "Yeah, I can't breathe out of my nose and I'm getting constant diarrhea. Yours is all the Rad-Away; mine's, well I'm not paying for the tests but I suspect it's waterborne. Your fucking brother is right as rain. He's been working around town for the last few days."

April was at this point getting into her Vault Suit, forcing her legs into the tight confines of the liner, then the suit itself, and then trying to zip up the front, yellow stripe.

April: "What's Megaton like?"

Brisa: "Primitive and everyone here is a fucking idiot for living around a working bomb. It's all third-world shanty town construction. The place is a literal pit 50 feet deep. I think the Chinese thought there was a bunker under here or something. I'd say a space rod hit the area and a dud bomb rolled in. That or the locals rolled it in deliberately. There's a fucking cult worshiping the damn thing. Says whenever there's a detonation it creates new universes. It's degenerate."

April slid her left sleeve both the liner and the Vaultsuit, as the two were zipped together but not the same thing, then flipped on her PipBoy onto her left wrist. She sat on the bed, one leg on the bed, cross leg style and the other on the ground.

April: "You can turn around now." Brisa did. "Thanks for taking care of me."

Brisa smiled, "Ah, no problem. Just glad you're up cause the sooner we get out of here, the sooner I can buy an antihistamine and breathe again."

After a minute April's PipBoy clicked on, an app was running and she smiled and nearly whooped. She hit a few keys on the wrist mount and she sighed contentedly.

April: "Ah, air conditioning's back on." She rolled her shoulders and flexed her arms out, and found the thick socks for her Vaultsuit. "So, um, did you guys hit the school? Did you see the Supermutant? Get good data on these ferals?"

Brisa sat down on the bed close to her, and said, "April….we gotta talk; expedition Leader to Expedition member."

April looked at her funny, "Am I in trouble?" she hurriedly put on her boots and smoothed the cuff of them over the Vaultsuit, making them look smart and to make sure the ventilation was getting to her feet.

Brisa: "Kinda, we all are," she breathed in heavily, "The Regulators won't talk to Three Dog, they talked with Dr. Li down in Rivet City, and she said Doc had come through but didn't know where he went. Only that he was looking for a GECK."

April: "What's a Geck?"

Brisa: "I was getting to that. It's some kind of terraforming module, distributed to some of the Vaults. But not 101, or at least, if Doc had found one, he'd have taken it with him."

April: "OK, so where does that leave our search?"

Brisa: "Well, you're probably getting your wish. We can't come back, because your dad could be anywhere….unless we make our way down to Rivet City and talk to Dr. Li in person and she has new information."

April: "What about the memorial? What about Three Dog?"

Brisa: "The Regulators won't talk to Three Dog and the Memorial they aren't willing to send a team in. Yet….but there is good news. Sorta. A FUSA patrol is going to clean out the Supermutants on the eastern bank of the Potomac all the way down to Rivet City.

April: "And Rivet City's in the Washington Naval Yard right?"

Brisa: "Yes."

April: "How close is that to the Memorial?"

Brisa: "Less than a mile through marshes. More distance but faster to go around. But I have it on good authority that they'll help us in exchange for working the patrol."

April: "Then why are you worried? We have an escort all the way downtown. We're not going to have to walk it alone"

Brisa: "April, I saw that supermutant in the sewer. That was just one. These things work in groups, and they all wield heavy weaponry. Weaponry they usually take off patrols like these….you have no idea how dangerous these things are, do you?"

April: "They're ten feet tall, Three Dog says they rip people in half, and they're stupid. They're also clearly bio-engineered weapons so I'd imagine some combination of super healing factor, resilient organs, enhanced senses, able to carry heavy ordinance, utter fearlessness, and ferociousness that only a stupid AI enemy could show. Charge right into a bullet storm and survive long enough to take out a machine gun nest?"

Brisa: "Worse. That throat slitting was almost entirely healed up by the time the creature died. That wasn't a minor cut; it went nearly to the spine. That means it healed up in just a few minutes."

April: [scoffing] "Really? That's all you can tell me? Come'on Brisa, I know you aren't familiar with the finer things in life, but just because most guns only cause bleedout don't mean nothing can kill something like that. A 10 foot tall, four foot wide freak of a being like that just makes a larger target for military grade flamethrowers, high explosives, plasma casters, and my personal favorite, the Ma Duce. 50 calibers of post-World War I whupass will turn those fuckers into big green smears."

Brisa: [dismissively] "You're insane."

April: [a little peeved] "No, Brisa, I'm familiar with firepower. If these things are basically wearing organic power armor in their skin, then you hunt them the same way you hunt people in power armor: light armored vehicle grade weapon systems"

Brisa: [angrily] "This isn't a game April!"

April: "Who says? And yeah. Yeah, you're right Brisa, it's not a game. Thus there are no rules. So we win; cause if it bleeds, we can kill it. We just need the right equipment. And allies. Which we're going to get in this FUSA patrol."

Brisa: "Yeah, and we had the firepower and the allies in the sewer and you get critically injured not one hour into the affair! You were really sick there for a while, you lost ten pounds in water waste at minimum. You of all people should be aware of how easy it is to critically injure a human being, one cut, one sprained ankle out there and you and all of us could be done for. You're goddamned reckless!"

April looked at her intensely "He who dares, wins. Over cautious can be as suicidal as over confidence. We're green…."

Brisa: "I don't want to hear it!" She pointed her finger into April's chest right above her heart, "And I don't want you playing goddamned hero. My job is to keep you two alive, to keep myself alive and I don't want to be drug along with all your fighting. Valhalla is not for Vaultdwellers. And this place is full of things to send you there. This isn't like fighting Butch and his loser friends, these people out here will KILL YOU."

Doc Church came in through the door with a red headed woman in blue overalls.

Doc Church: "I hate to interrupt scintillating conversation but you, the sick one, have a visitor. Brisa, you're getting paid by the stimpack, and those things aren't going to refill themselves."

Brisa got up and faced in front of Doc Church, "You know it's unsanitary to ever reuse a syringe right? They bend on the microscopic level?"

Doc Church: "That's for you to care about and me to not give a shit. Hypos are too expensive to replace willy nilly like that. Just make sure they're clean and sterilized." Brisa was not happy to hear this.

Brisa: "Yes, Doc Church," and she went out of the room, presumably to the lab station beside the chemical shower.

Doc Church: "All right Moira Brown, this is our patient April."

Moira stuck out her hand and when April tentatively embraced it with hers, she shook it way, way, too energetically,

Moira: "Hi, April, I'm Moira Brown, I run Craterside Supply. It's a pleasure to finally meet'cha! You probably don't remember me, but when the Regulators first brought you in I helped get you down here, then did a tiny, tiny experiment on you."

April: [not pleased]: Experiment?

Moria: [oblivious] Oh dear yes. You see I've been writing a field guide for how to survive in the wasteland, and I thought gee, this young Vaultdweller getting irradiated for the first time would be the perfect to conduct a study of some home remedies….

April: "BRISA!"

Brisa was back in the room far quicker than April thought would be logical and she was smiling, SMILING, sheepishly.

April: "Why is this store lady running experiments on me? Is this why I can't remember anything from the last four days?"

Moira: "Well you see….." she was cut off with a gesture from Brisa. April was becoming alarmed again.

Brisa: "You were at 650 rems, frankly, nothing could hurt you at that point."

April: "650 rems?!"

Brisa: "In ten minutes."

April: [utterly, eye popingly horrified] "I got two years of rem exposure in one fight?!"

Moria: "What does that all mean? In your words?"

April: [looking at her like she's stupid] "You experimented on me without knowing what rems are?"

Moira scratched the back of her head, sheepishly, "Well, I know they're bad, I know anything about 1,000 will make you very sick…."

April: [deeply annoyed] "A rem is a unit of radiation exposure over time. You're not supposed to get more than 1000 rems of exposure in a year, and that's working with nuclear power. The average background rem is 300 per year at sea level, 400 in Denver," Moira seemed not to comprehend, "Which is a mile up." Still bafflement was on Moira's face. "Which is why it's called the Mile High City, or at least it was."

Moira: "Oh, Denver is a city! On a mountain I presume?"

Brisa: "Anyway, April, it was just some milk and magnets."

Moira: [happily] "Don't forget the happy thoughts!"

April: [deadpanning] "Radiation doesn't work that way."

Moira looked at Brisa, who also said, "Yeah, radiation definitely doesn't work that way."

Moira was baffled at this: "So, um, why do people swear by curdled milk as something that makes them feel better after getting dosed?"

April: "Placebo effect. That or it makes them throw up whatever they ingested that they shouldn't have."

Moira: "So, it doesn't work."

Brisa: "Radiation poisoning doesn't normally kill people. It increases there long term cancer risks, particularly of the thyroid, as it tends be trap for any iodine, radioactive or not. That's what Rad-X does first and foremost, it absorbs radioactive particles before they can settle in your body. That's why you take Rad-X before getting anywhere radioactive, and then take Rad-Away once it's safe."

Moira: "So it's not just because it's intravenous?"

April: "Ms. Brown, have you ever used Rad-Away?"

Moira: "Oh me? No no no! I've gotten radiation cleansings of course, but never had need for that!"

April: "Well, count yourself lucky then because Rad-Away is emergency treatment. It's chemotherapeutic, which means it chemically causes organs to expel their radiation particles. It can cause cramps, dehydration. Nausea and diarrhea are almost guaranteed." She looked over at Doc Church, "Hey, Doc, why haven't you explained all this to her?"

Doc Church: "Because I don't have time to indulge this crazy girl's experiments." He looked over to Brisa "And neither do you." Then Brisa was gone.

April: [confused] "You've had time to listen to me explain it."

Doc Church: "Yeah, hmmph, I guess I have. But this was entertaining, and I got you know you have the faintest idea what you're talking about. It's good to know."

April was about to say something, then closed her mouth and thought better of it. Then a new thought came to her mind, "Ms. Brown?"

Moira: "Yes, and for Pete's sake, call me Moira. Everyone does."

April: "Moira, then. I can explain radiation poisoning to you. A real thorough overview of how it happens, the symptoms, even the best way to rig up an anti-radiation kit. And, I might add, any other medical questions you'd ever want to ask a professional for your field guide."

Moira: "Oh really? A real doctor, sitting down and talking with me? That would be all kinds of wonderful!"

April: [getting up] "I would expect a consultant's fee of course."

Moira: "Well of course I can pay you! Don't be silly, I wouldn't dream of asking something for nothing. Can I pay you in kind?"

April: "Medical supplies?"

Moira: "Of course! And I have all kinds of other research I need help with if you're interested. I even have a research assistant who might need your help."

April: "One thing at a time. Excuse me," she and Moira went past Doc Church who was taking out the doorway out to the front of the clinic.

April got a taste of the outside and it tasted like crap. While the outside had a clear blue sky, it was only slightly less hot than the clinic, and it smelled of garbage. Megaton was truly a pit, as Brisa said, nearly 50 feet deep, with not-so gently sloping slopes with aluminum shacks with clear airplane parts sticking out of the sides of the hill. This clinic was near the bottom of the pit, where she could see a food stand right next to a pool of water and a large, undetonated nuclear bomb. It looked primitive; in fact it was built like a Fat Man bomb, which meant it was almost certainly meant to be dropped by iron sight to evade American antiballistic countermeasures.

Moira: "So, April…."

April turned to her new patron, slightly annoyed at how cheerful and informal she was with a total stranger.

April: "Lead on. I don't know where your store is"

Moira pointed to the quarter hulk of a passenger jet, the cabin sticking over a shack with a large sign saying 'Craterside Supply'. It curved from the cabin down to an arrow pointing to the small door below. It was a level up, and April wasn't sure how they were going to get up the sides.

April looked up somehow surprised she was surprised, "It's called Craterside Supply because it's by the side of a crater. Huh. Neat."

Moira started walking around the building, and sure enough there was a really steep staircase carved into the slope, with wooden steps and no hand rails.

Moira: "Oh it's such a pain to climb these things from the bottom, but that's what you have to do when you can't skirt around the edge. You know, I was just coming back from fixing an axel outside, and then I check up on you and your finally awake. Third time's a charm. So, what's it like to by that irradiated?"

April: "Well, aside from nearly burning a hole in the floor, I think I could hear my genes crying."

Moria: "My my, radiation poisoning causes auditory hallucinations?!"

April: "No, I was being a smart ass. Radiation doesn't work that way" This was becoming a catch phrase with her and she wasn't liking it very much.


End file.
